Is It Ever Right To Break The Law Essay

DURING recent months, public events have repeatedly drama­tized an old and troublesome problem. A group of students defies the State Department's ban on travel to Cuba; a teachers' union threatens a strike even though a state law prohibits strikes by public employes; advocates of civil rights employ mass demonstra­tions of disobedience to the law to ad­vance their cause; the Governor of a Southern state deliberately obstructs the enforcement of Federal laws, and declares himself thoroughly within his rights in doing so.

Is It Ever Right to Break the Law?

An observer can approve the motives that lead to some of these actions and disapprove others. All, nevertheless, raise the same fundamental question: Does the individual have the right—or perhaps the duty—to disobey the law when his mind, his conscience or

The question is as old as Socrates. lt has regularly propelled men into radical examination of the premises of person­al morality and civic obligation and, in­deed, of
Such people concede that disobedience to the law can sometimes be legitimate and necessary under a despotic regime. They argue, however, that civil disobedi­ence can never be justified in a democratic society, because such a society provides its members with legal instru­ments for the redress of their grievances.

This is one of the standard arguments that is made, often quite sincerely, against the ac­tivities of people like sup­porters of the Congress of Ra­cial Equality, who set about changing laws they find ob­jectionable by dramatically breaking them. Such groups are often condemned for risk­ing disorder and for spreading disrespect for the law when, so it is maintained, they could accomplish their goals a great deal more fairly and patriot­ically by staying within the law, and confining themselves to the courts and to methods of peaceful