If you would consider yourself to be an ethical person, (based on whatever principles you derive your inner compass from) do you have an obligation to question and protest laws you find unfair or unethical?
For the purposes of this thread, let us leave out huge, sweeping, easy laws to rail against and focus more on day to day issues that while legal, are not necessarily ethical. The allowance of huge monetary awards, strange ordinances regarding personal behaviour still on the books, legal loopholes that allow businesses to screw consumers or vice versa.
If you feel that these items are unethical, is your compliance with these laws unethical? Do you have an obligation to try and change them?
Obligation, no, but I’d consider it worthy of a calculation of self-interest:
[ul][li]How much effort would I have to put in to get activity X legalized?[/li]Is that amount greater than the amount of effort I spend complying with (or just evading) the laws against X?[/ul]
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Obligation, no, but I’d consider it worthy of a calculation of self-interest:
[ul][li]How much effort would I have to put in to get activity X legalized?[/li][li]Is that amount greater than the amount of effort I spend complying with (or just evading) the laws against X?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Good point. As a corollary to my OP, let me add the following then:
Absent of external influences, is the legality of an act the benchmark for it’s morality?
Likewise, if you view adherence to the law as an ethical obligation to the social contract, does circumventing those laws or ordinances constitute an unethical act in and of itself?
To me my moral system (I’m a fairly conservative Roman Catholic) is the most important thing when it comes to ethics. This moral system is not just based on Catholic doctrine but also on legal principles enshrined in the American constitution. When it comes to the law I put things in one of three categories: in agreement with my code of ethics, neutral to my code of ethics, against my code of ethics.
If the law in question agrees with my code of ethics I’ll both follow it and defend it if necessary. An easy example is murder. My ethical system holds murder is wrong and so I would not murder and I would do my best to keep laws against murder on the books. Some people think of this as imposing my own morality on others but I see all laws as a codification of a society’s moral system that is defined by the collective discussion of the morals of that society’s members.
If the law in question is neutral to my ethical system I will follow it even if I may or may not agree with it. However, I will seek to have it changed if I disagree with it, but I will follow it while I do so. Typically laws that disallow my doing something that I feel I should be able to do but don’t have an obligation or right to do fall in this category. An example would be the drinking age. It is neutral to my ethical code and so I will follow it and consider it unethical not to. I may try to lower the age if it was of concern to me (It is not), but I’ll comply with the current law while doing so.
If the law in question violates my ethics I will either not comply with it or not do the allowed action if that action is allowed but not forced. I will also attempt to change the law, but the effort I put into it depends on how badly it violates my ethical system and how much infringes on my ability to maintain my ethical system. For example I would fight quite strongly against a law that mandated that all people be placed on mandatory chemical birth control and I would not comply with the law. However I contain my efforts against using birth control under the current law to ethical debates because I feel the that is the best way to address the current situation. On the other hand, I campaign strongly to have a legal ban on abortion because I feel this is a serious violation of my and others ethics and rights even though the law does not mandate abortion.
So to sum up I do feel that there is an ethical obligation to follow a law that does not actively require a violation of my code of ethics. I also feel that it is an obligation to defend those laws that do fit my code of ethics and remove or modify those laws that violate it. I also feel obligated to attempt to end or limit practices that violate my code of ethics by working for new laws or modifications of existing laws where such legal intervention is a practical and reasonable response. For example I think that lending practices which defraud or abuse borrowers are an appropriate area of legal intervention, but laws about sex outside of marriage would not practical or reasonable.
However, one can not break a law on ethical grounds without being willing to accept the consequences. If one does break the law on ethical grounds, and escapes the consequences, that’s fine by me.
If I were a member of a jury it would indeed be my duty - my job, actually. As a normal citizen, I will work through the normal democratic means to reform laws with which I disagree, but there’s no obligation for me or any other citizen to question all the laws.
While the specific examples in Caveat lector’s post differ from mine, the system of thought and action is pretty much the same. If it’s something in line with my ethics, great - I’ll follow it and support it. If it’s neutral to my ethics, I’ll follow it, but depending on how much it bothers me, I may try legal channels to change it. If it’s contrary to my ethics, I will not follow it, I will stridently try to change it through both legal and illegal methods and I will encourage others to do the same.
I do not think the social contract is the be-all-end-all to ethics. I think there are universal moral imperatives, and there are times when, as my dad likes to say, “the masses are asses.” If they vote in an immoral or unethical law, I do not feel *ethically *constrained by it.
I do, however, agree that one practicing civil disobedience must be prepared to deal with the *legal *consequences.
Yeah, ethics and morals are different. Sometimes they are in conflict.
As for the law, I think we all have an ethical obligation to comply; that’s why we pay taxes. However, sometimes we have an moral obligation to not comply.