Bad Law Points to a Higher Law

Mill’s parsing out of the various ways people view disobedience to unjust laws might be a helpful starting point for thinking about the justification of riots. (Though, in fact, virtually no one is justifying rioting and cf. Charlie Cooke’s excellent point, on the latest Editors podcast, ep. 223, distinguishing the injustice of riots vs. the justice of revolutions). But it also drew my attention to the fact that protest of bad law points to a higher law.

Some maintain that no law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should only be shown in endeavoring to get it altered by competent authority. This opinion (which condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind, and would often protect pernicious institutions against the only weapons which, in the state of things existing at the time, have any chance of succeeding against them) is defended by those who hold it on grounds of expediency, principally on that of the importance to the common interest of mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentiment of submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opinion that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be unjust but only inexpedient, while others would confine the license of disobedience to the case of the unjust laws; but, again, some say that all laws which are inexpedient are unjust, since every law imposes some restriction on the natural liberty of mankind, which restriction is an injustice unless legitimated by tending to their good. Among these diversities of opinion it seems to be universally admitted that there may be unjust laws, and that law, consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of justice, but may give to one person a benefit, or impose on another an evil, which justice condemns. When, however, a law is thought to be unjust, it seems always to be regarded as being so in the same way in which a breach of law is unjust, namely, by infringing somebody’s right, which as it cannot in this case b e legal right, receives a different appellation and is called a moral right.— Utilitarianism, ch. 5