Just because there’s a law doesn’t mean there’s a point.
In most matters, I trust my own judgment better than the consensus of society.
I’m with the OP. It doesn’t mean I willfully break laws because there’s a law. . .smoking weed is a perfect example. I don’t do cocaine for various reasons, none of which are because it’s illegal. I do smoke pot, and the fact that it is illegal has no sway on my mindset.
It’s not wrong just because it’s illegal. That’s a sort of appeal to authority, circular reasoning that I can’t get behind.
There was a very interesting article in the NYTimes Magazine a couple weeks ago about the basis of morality. The claim was that there are fundamental “morals” that most people accept, regardless of society (and excluding deviants within the society). . .things like “purity”, “authority”, “fairness”.
One of the difference between societies is how much weight people put on each one. They indicated that Republicans, for instance, weighted “purity” and “authority” more than Democrats did, while Democrats weighted “fairness” more. You’d want to read the article for defiitions of those concepts.
They gave an example of a brother and sister who decided to have sex. They were psychologically fine with the idea, and had no qualms afterwards. They used ample protection, so no weird offspring. No one else knew about it, so no spreading of the idea.
People would still reply, “well it’s wrong” even if it addressed all the concerns about why it was wrong. It basically violated their sense of “purity”. One of the points of the article was that some things like that are just “wrong” to us, and we argue backwards to come up with reasons not to do it.
Consider also that the ballooning monstrosity of statutes and regulations are not put in with the expectation that they will all be enforced. (If every law were enforced most people would be in jail (consider habitual speeders and suburban pot-smokers, not to mention every driver who leaves every club at 2:00 am all over the nation, and drives home.). Often the laws are put in place by some active legislator reacting to the horror cause de jour and seemed to be enforced for awhile and then left alone.
The laws are there so that cops can maintain “order.” Where there is no disorder, the cops simply do not attempt to enforce the laws. That’s why the suburban pot-smokers never get busted, but the teen on the streets has the long rap sheet.
And I have no problem with someone who has arrived at a morality of “do the least harm,” ignoring the law (of course at his own peril).
It’s not a matter of judgment. I think of laws as a contract, an agreement with society. It’s the cost of being a member of the society. I may personally not like the laws, but if I break it, then I’m failing to uphold my end of the bargain.
But that “authority” is our collective will. Assuming a reasonably functional democracy, that is.
I think breaking a social/legal rule is one of those things that are just “wrong” to us. Not because the thing itself feels wrong, but only because there’s a rule. We’re social animals; cooperation is part of our instinct.
I think that the distinction that everyone is looking at is the distinction between laws that are malum in se and malum prohibitum.
Rape, Murder, and Theft are wrong in and of themselves and the vast majority of people tend to view them as such. Things such as copyright, speed limits and other more regulatory acts are illegal because the statute makes it illegal. A case of this might be sales of hard liquor in a non authorized retail outlet, say buying a bottle of vodka in a non ABC store in Virginia.
I follow the law because I can usually see the point of doing so and because oftentimes, the penalty for not doing so outweighs the benefit I would receive by doing so.
I am somewhat disappointed how many people will break a law when they don’t agree with it. Seems to make laws meaningless when they do that, and certainly doesn’t make me feel very safe.
Absolutely. Whenever I see those programs on TV where they interview the surviving members of a family devastated by irresponsible individuals who believe they are above the law, I know that it’s attitudes like these that make them an everyday occurrence.
The problem is that like Caffeine.Addict was saying.
A person breaking a murder law is evil. Really, whether the law is on the books or not is probably pretty irrelevant to how much murder really goes on.
A person breaking a marijuana law is breaking a law he deems unreasonable.
It doesn’t make “laws meaningless”. I just don’t view the law as an authority, or if I do, I don’t respect that authority.
I don’t obey the law just because “it’s the law”. That’s the point of the original post.
I find it hard to believe that you view all laws as being equally valid.
To consider one set of laws that I’m starting to get very annoyed with: US Copyright law. Specifically when it applies to electronic media.
I’m actually in favor of what I’d consider a reasonable copyright. But when, in the name of protecting that copyright I have to purchase with the electronic media software that acts as spyware - and buggy spyware! - I get very pissed off with the copyright holder.
There are several ways to deal with that annoyance. One of them is to lobby one’s legislaters to have the legal environment changed. Which I, and others, have done. Another way, frankly, is to obtain copies of the media that do not include the offending software. Which is breaking the law, I’ll admit.
For that matter, I still hold out hope that “Fair Use” will regain some of its protections. I do believe that sharing of songs between friends has always been to the benefit of individual artists, by getting their works to wider distribution. But the current legal environment is trying to crack down hard on that. I’ve made mix tapes when I was younger, and will continue to make the odd mix CD, for friends. Which is against the law, as it is currently interpreted in the US.
FTM, under some interpretations of the law making use, or archive, copies of electronic media could be prosecuted as a violation of the law.
Let’s consider, too, various legally enforced monopolies, or mandated services. Some of them I recognize as being quite worth the necessary evil that such entails - utility companies, for example. Automobile insurance is a an industry that I’d consider legally mandated services, which I agree with the need for that legal mandate.
But the law often chooses one-size fits all solutions. Or almost worse, chooses to act to prevent corner cases at the cost of all reason. Even when the public benefit in most instances is worth the force involved, it’s not always the case. To pick one of my favorite fatted calves, the funerary industry has a lot of protections built into the law for it. Including (at least at one time) that no one could be buried in a non-approved cemetery. Which makes a good deal of sense if one is thinking about someplace like the NYC area. But one effect of such laws, until they got amended, was to forbid rural families living miles from any major metropolis to use their family plots on their own land. Because they weren’t approved cemeteries.
Dickens wrote:
Sometimes the law does act the idiot. Another one of my favorite bits of legal idiocy is that the law, in most of the US protects the right of a minor to receive an abortion, without parental permission, nor even notification while at the same time, the law forbids school nurses from administering an aspirin to that same minor without explicit parental permission. These two things do not make sense when taken as a whole, and are another instance where I believe that the law is acting the ass or idiot. (FWIW, my preferred solution is to loosen the restrictions on children ten years of age or older.)
Did you hear, a few years back, what happened when an asthmatic child recognized an asthma attack in another student? The first child gave his/her inhaler to the attack victim. There was some talk, at the time, that the child’s quick thinking, recognition of the symptoms, and actions may have saved the second child’s life. How did the law respond to that situation? At first, the local authorities wanted to prosecute the child for administering medication without a license and for violations of various prescription medication statutes. I happen to believe that those laws are generally good laws - that protect the common good and often with no adverse consequence to the public. But, in this case, the law was again acting the ass, and I think that the child involved did very well to break the law. (Assuming the child knew the legal ramifications of his/her actions.)
I guess what it comes down to is that while I don’t agree with those persons who have talked about traffic laws as being among those that they’ll break routinely*, I still don’t see the need to treat the law as something that demands my absolute obedience. Sometimes the law is wrong, sometimes the right action may be illegal (I believe that breaking and entering is against the law for any but law-enforcement or fire department personnel; If I see a child in a house on fire, I will be willing to break in to get the child out, if I’m the only help around.), sometimes the law is written in such a way to make no distinction between circumstances.
And sometimes people talk about civil disobedience** who are just using that for cover for being selfish asses.
*I’m not trying to say that I don’t speed, but I do try to avoid it.
** One of the things that annoys me about many modern persons who claim that they’re doing their civil disobedience in the spirit of Thoreau and Gandhi, is that they forget how both men emphasized the public commission of their acts of disobedience, and only begin talking about the flaws within the law after they’ve been caught.
Wow. I’m surprised to see so many people who follow the law for the law’s sake. I’ll go so far as to say I’m alarmed that a few attitudes in this thread basically boil down to “I suffer under the law, so everybody else should too.” If the Republicans manage to hang on to power in the next general election, looks like they won’t have too much trouble with their police state agenda. But I’m straying off topic.
I’d argue that it’s your moral obligation to consider the law in the context of your schema and, if it presents a significant moral conflict, disobey it.
There are plenty of additional reasons one might break a law. What if the law is unenforceable and abiding by it puts you at a significant disadvantage with respect to the rest of the population. Before you start spouting off about how “selfish” that is, first establish for me that you always drive under the speed limit and that you never cross the street in the middle of the block.
I don’t view them as equally valid. But I do obey them. I shouldn’t be able to choose to break some laws when I wish if I don’t like what they say; that way lies madness.
You may as well say that it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to kill if they feel that law is stupid. Of course they think it’s stupid and it shouldn’t apply to them, that’s why they think they can get away with doing it. Clearly their morals have failed them, and their self restraint, so the laws need to apply. And they need to apply to everybody equally so that they mean anything at all.
My moral code includes “I obey the law, no matter how inconvenient or foolish I may view any of them*”. If everybody else obeyed them all too, the world would be a much nicer, safer place to be.
And if I do break any, I accept the punishment I am due without argument (though perhaps with some grumbling)
That way does not lie madness except for simpletons unable to hold a nuanced view of our institutions. You don’t strike me as such, but that is such a simplistic view.
In some parts of the world, it is legal to stone a woman to death who has been raped.
Laws tha allow things are not the same as those that disallow things. That law doesn’t force you to stone anybody at all, it just allows it to be possible. Plus I do not live in that country, so I can’t really say that specific law counts. If I lived in such a place, perhaps my point of view would be different.
Whose? Yours? Mine? Theirs? The Invisible Pink Unicorn’s?
Then why have laws at all? Clearly you think each person’s own moral code is good enough. Let’s abandon all laws and do whatever we want whenever we want.
I might be the only one to think that the system works pretty well.
Take speeding. Yes, I speed. Yes, I think the speed limits are too slow.
However, I know that expecting my personal beliefs to line up with societies on a whole on everything is way out of line.
So, while I think it’s stupid, I tend to obey the law. I will speed sometimes but if I get a ticket, I get a ticket. That’s the way it is.
If the laws get too out of whack and ‘nannyish’ then I would help campaign to get them changed and hopefully enough people would join.
My respect for the IQ of law enforcement went up when I moved into a newly built house in a new community. Many residents with kids wanted stop signs every 5 inches and speed limits of negative 10 mph. The Law enforcement officials at the meeting calmly explained that putting stop signs at every intersection was too much and caused people to disregard them and speed limits too low just provoked disrespect for the laws plus were just plain unreasonable.
So, you’re saying you support extortionate salt taxes? There’s no question what the law was, at the time that Gandhi started his salt Satyagraha. And the law made it clearly illegal for coastal persons to collect their own salt from sea water, and imposed a rather hefty tax as well as protecting the gov’t monopoly. Similarly, it did take such drastic actions to get the law reconsidered. And to start to unite the people ruled by the Raj.
For that matter, what is the defense, recognized where English common law is the basis for the legal code, of “justiable homicide” if not a codification that allows murder or manslaughter, in certain circumstances?
Because I started out in this thread saying that the idea of a rule of law is vital for society. I really do believe that. And if I am held accountable for my actions in breaking the law, I’m not going to claim that is unfair. Depending on the law I may argue that the law is flawed, or that the enforcement is too haphazard.
But civil disobedience is an effective tool available to change law, or to get the law discussed. Which can lead to changes in the law.
