Civil Disobedience: Are We Morally Obliged to Obey Unjust Laws?

Are we morally obliged to obey even unjust laws? This moral question addresses what we commonly know as civil disobedience. In order to properly discuss civil disobedience and whether or not it is moral to disobey laws, we must first characterize civil disobedience. In Peter Singer's book, Practical Ethics he begins to characterize civil disobedience as arising from "ethical disagreement" and raising the question of whether "to uphold the law, even if the law protects and sanctions things we hold utterly wrong?" (Singer 292).

Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay entitled Civil Disobedience that was published in 1854 in the collection of essays called Walden; or Life in the Woods. Thoreau first wrote of civil disobedience in opposition to the Mexican War, but his words still hold truth and meaning for us today. In Civil Disobedience Thoreau explains his ideas about government and whether or not we should obey laws that do not appear to the individual to be moral. Thoreau recognizes that there can be abuse to government, and simply because something is passed as law, does not make it right. He says:

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it (Thoreau 1).

With civil disobedience, we are discussing government and the law, and if we should uphold laws, even when they are not morally right and how, if we are to go against the law, should we do that? We should not have to obey laws that are unjust, but we also must look at each individual instance where injustice is occurring and carefully determine how to act. Civil disobedience must remain civil and not become violent. If disobedi...

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...ly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made a man a whit more just; and by means of respect for it, even the well disposed are made the agents of injustice (Thoreau 2).

Violence is hard to justify when discussing civil disobedience. The whole idea behind civil disobedience is that it is a way to bring attention to an injustice without causing harm to others.

Bibliography

# Singer, Peter.Practical Ethics. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press. 1993.

# Thoreau, Henry David.Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. Dover Publications, Inc. Dover Thrift Editions. 1993

# The Sevagram Ashram. http://www.mkgandhi.org/sevagram/default.htm

# People v Pitts. Michigan No. 186260. LC No. 95-003317. 1997. http://www.milawyersweekly.com/micoa/186260.HTM