Question

Obeying unjust laws hart legal and moral obligation

Answer 1

Whatever else they do, all legal systems recognize, create, vary and enforce obligations. This is no accident: obligations are central to the social role of law and explaining them is necessary to an understanding of law's authority and, therefore, its nature. Not only are there obligations in the law, there are also obligations to the law. Historically, most philosophers agreed that these include a moral obligation to obey, or what is usually called “political obligation.” Voluntarists maintained that this requires something like a voluntary subjection to law's rule, for example, through consent. Non-voluntarists denied this, insisting that the value of a just and effective legal system is itself sufficient to validate law's claims. Both lines of argument have recently come under intense scrutiny, and some philosophers now deny that law is entitled to all the authority it claims for itself, even when the legal system is legitimate and reasonably just. On this view there are legal obligations that some of law's subjects have no moral obligation to perform.

1. Obligations In the Law2. Authority, Obligation, and Legitimacy3. Obligations to the Law4. Non-voluntarist theories4.1 Constitutive Obligations4.2 Instrumental Justification4.3 Necessity5. Voluntarist Theories5.1 Consent5.2 Expressive Obligations5.3 Fairness6. Scepticism and anarchismBibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet Resources

Answer 2

As a prelude, it is instructive to recognize that Hart holds the positivist view that one has a legal obligation to obey an unjust law. ... there are certain principles of human conduct, awaiting dis- covery by human reason, with which man-made law must conform if it is to be valid