It is far better to follow your own moral compass and ignore the law entirely.
I can’t really choose either option, because there are so many gray areas and too many laws that people don’t know about or understand. I guess I lean toward the letter with common sense added.
Some examples of my own scofflawing:
- My daughter and I both use inhalers. Federal law prohibits transferring a prescription from one person to another. But if she’s out of her inhaler, and I have one, and she needs it, am I going to let her suffer?
- Speeding 15+ miles over the limit is illegal and will get you a ticket. When she had an asthma attack while we were out of town (see above), I didn’t bother obeying the limit.
- I buy ebooks from several sites. If I remove DRM from a book purchased at site A, to use on a reader that works on site B, there’s some argument as to whether that removal violates the law. My attitude is that as long as I’m not sharing the book with anyone, I’m harming nobody and in fact am benefitting the sellers - because by doing so, I can purchase books from site A (and perhaps even buy A’s device the next time I need one).
All that said, there are many instances where interpreting the law can lead to bad results, like the example of running a stop sign when you mistakenly thought nobody else was around.
If I have to go strictly either-or, then spirit of the law has to win out, though only by a slim margin.
They’re both incredibly important. If we ignore the spirit of the law, then there’s almost always a way to twist words to mean what you want them to. But if we ignore the letter of the law, then the spirit is a pretty amorphous concept that is easily misinterpreted. A successful law needs both elements taken into consideration.
That’s what “the spirit of the law” means. Apparently you missed the spirit of the poll.