Rights, respect, and the duty to obey the law

I aim in this paper to give a new account of “political obligation,” the moral duty to obey the law. What the law requires of us often coincides with the content of widely accepted moral duties. In such cases, it may seem obvious that there is a duty to obey. If we accept a moral duty not to assault others, for example, it may seem obvious that there is a moral duty to obey a law that prohibits assault. But while there may be, in such cases, a duty to act as the law happens to command, it does not follow that there is a duty to obey the law—to do as the law commands for the reason that the law commands it.1 The question I am concerned with is not: “Do we have a moral duty to do what the law tells us to do?”, but rather: “Does the fact that the law tells us to do something generate a moral duty to do it?” I will argue that it does—in certain kinds of states. I'll defend the claim that citizens of democratic states have a pro tanto moral duty to obey their laws, except for those laws which violate people's basic rights. States cannot carry out such morally essential tasks unless their laws are obeyed by most people. That is, widespread obedience to their laws is necessary to maintain the stability of states and their ability to perform their morally essential functions. To these is added a normative premise of the following sort: I am going to offer a natural duty account which does not invoke the standard argument. Views that rely on that argument are subject to a serious objection I'll call the objection from the sufficiency of partial or selective compliance.6 A satisfactory account of political obligation must establish a general moral presumption in favor of obedience.7 The problem for the standard argument is that not many laws play a role in enabling states to perform morally essential tasks. Consider laws which regulate fishing, require people to report found treasure, or establish protections for historical monuments—a state's ability to rescue people from the state of nature or maintain justice would not be undermined if these laws were generally disobeyed (i.e., not complied with). That is, premise (2) of the standard argument is false: Maintaining the state's stability and ability to perform morally essential functions does not require widespread compliance with very many of its laws; widespread compliance with a small subset of its laws would suffice. As such, the conclusion of the standard argument doesn't follow. At best, the standard argument establishes only a duty to comply with a small subset of laws, namely those laws general compliance with which is necessary for the state's ability to administer justice or rescue people from the state of nature; we are off the moral hook for compliance with the vast majority of laws. That is to say, according to the standard argument, the laws with respect to which there is a pro tanto duty to obey are exceptions; the argument fails to establish anything like a moral presumption in favor of obedience.8 The distinctive natural duty account I offer overcomes this limitation by invoking the moral significance of the fact that a state is democratic. My account has a further important virtue: It is immune to the so-called “particularity objection” which claims that natural duty theories cannot establish a particularized moral bond to specially obey the laws of one's own state. I begin with the following claim: Justice intrinsically requires not merely that we establish and maintain political society, but that we establish and maintain a particular kind of political society—one in which every person is accorded an equal democratic say. I do not argue for the claim in this paper; my argument assumes it. That is, my argument assumes that there is a moral to an equal democratic every of a political has a to for political and for and such democratic the content of the laws and to which is will be by those and and by defend is the of that be but that there is a to a democratic say. I do not have to defend the it is an that is widely as a moral claim to an of as as a of political the people the it as a of What I aim to establish is that if there is such a the duty to respect it a general duty the citizens of democratic states to obey their laws. 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