Thoughts on Law and Obligation: They're Not Always the Same

Let's start this article with a question:

Is a law to be followed just because it is a law (or court ruling)?

It would be tragic if this were presumed to be true because we have seen many harmful laws which have been implemented merely on the say so of the government—laws which were accepted unquestioningly by a majority of the people.

The Third Reich is the obvious example of such laws. The Nazi Party came to power legally and then legally (or through fait accompli) changed laws to what they wanted them to be.  if accepting a law on the basis of being a law (the technical term is legal positivism) is true, then it was not wrong for Germans to follow the laws of the Third Reich—something I suspect nobody would agree with. (if you're reading this, and you do agree, then do yourself a favor and keep quiet).

But we don't even have to "violate" Godwin's Law to demonstrate this. We can point to Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, the acceptance of slavery and segregation, forced relocations (Native American, Japanese). These were legal at one point in America.

So, let's go back to our question. Does the fact that a thing is a law mean that it must be followed?

1. If you answer "Yes," then you must accept the injustices a government that a government commits, and accept the claim that those opposing such a law (say, for example, Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr.) are wrong and ought to be punished for law-breaking.
2. If you answer "No," then it means you recognize that the government can do wrong, and when it does, it must be opposed, and this opposition is legitimate.

I think of this Legal Positivism attitude when I hear certain politicians invoke the "right to abortion" granted by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and other cases. The Supreme Court also affirmed the "right" to own slaves and the "right" to segregate. The Supreme Court may be the last stop when the political will is lacking to amend the Constitution, but we can see that history tells us that the Supreme Court has erred in the past—it is not infallible.

I think this demonstrates that government action cannot be the sole grounds of judging whether a thing is good or bad. If the Supreme Court, or Congress or the President does wrong, and the result of that wrong is a Ruling, or a Law, or an Executive Order, that result must be opposed with the intention of overturning the injustice.

Now of course, opposition cannot be rooted in "I don't like that policy! I want my policy!" (Which is what passes for political dispute today). Opposition must be rooted in the knowledge that some things are wrong—either always wrong, or wrong in circumstance (as an example: murder is always wrong. But in some contexts, like self defense, killing might be justified). This is not a matter of disputing what the percentage should be for the tax rate, where legitimate disputes can occur over what is best. This is a matter of "Does the government have the authority to decree that an evil is now good in a binding manner.

Some skeptics may face this point by denying we can know any thing is objectively wrong. But normally such skepticism is used with the intent of trying to justify doing a bad thing.  The fact is, we do know some things are wrong: The Holocaust, Ethnic Cleansing, Slavery, etc. We know that treating a human being as less than a human being is to be condemned regardless of where it is done or what century it is done.

Feigned or real ignorance is not a valid argument defense against the the fact that a thing is wrong. Yes, a person who truly does not know that a thing is wrong (for example a person who is insane) might have a defense against prosecution, but that does not mean that the act itself is not wrong. An insane man may not have deliberately chosen to commit murder, but that doesn't change the fact that murder is wrong.

But the person who feigns ignorance about the evil of a thing or a person who claims that good and evil is merely an arbitrary decision of the person who decrees it (many people who demand that the Catholic Church change her teaching fall into this category) does not have this defense, because we DO know things are wrong… even when we pretend not to know.

Think of it this way. The person who denies we can know what is truly good or evil will probably NOT think that way if I should steal his money (Hey, it's annoying writing articles on an Android tablet, I could use a laptop, and robbing you would help me get it quicker). Such a person, despite his claims that we can't know if a thing is good or evil, knows that it is wrong to deprive a person of his life or property at the whim of another.

We can see this in the skepticism used to defend the "right" of abortion. Roe v. Wade is essentially an Argument from Ignorance fallacy that claims that we cannot know where life begins, therefore we can't restrict the right to abortion. The problem is, a person taking action while not knowing whether it might harm another is at the least guilty of negligence and possibly manslaughter or even murder. When an action might cause harm to another, we are obligated to make sure it is safe to proceed before acting.

What is worse is the fact that some recent thinking in the defense of abortion holds that it probably is a person, but that is less important than the right not to be pregnant. In other words it effectively says it is ok to treat a person as less than human if it benefits me.

We've been down that road before. Here in America, we've treated Blacks, American Indians, Japanese and other minorities as being less than human for our own convenience. In other countries, Germans have treated Jews and Slavs as less than fully human. Serbs have treated Bosnians and Croats as less than fully human. Turks have treated Armenians as less than fully human.

The list goes on and on, each with government approval.

The only way to avoid such monstrosity is to recognize that law must be subject to truth, and when a government goes against what is true in its laws, it must be opposed.

There are graveyards filled with people because too many just decided that because a thing is a law, it must be acceptable.