OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE LAW: WIRELESS PHILOSOPHY (htt ps://youtu.

be/RMrTqHc15kk )
My name is Matthew Chrisman I teach philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and today I want to
talk to you about obligations to obey the law there are laws of nature and laws of human when we
obligated to obey the laws of humans and why it may seem obvious that we should obey the law after
all if lots of people were to go around murdering and stealing or even just driving on the wrong side of
the road society would grind to a halt and even if just a few people broke the law the rest of us might
rightly resent those people for not playing fair in our collective pursuit of the benefits of mutual
cooperation we should remember however that the laws of some societies are whimsical dictates of an
evil despot and even in his society isn't fundamentally unjust still some of its laws may be unjust either
and what they tell people to do or how they were formed so they can't always and everywhere be an
obligation to obey the law For these reasons political philosophers and legal theorists have sought a
principled way to draw the line between when there is and when there isn't obligation obey the law the
basic question is this what grounds or explains the obligation to obey the law in societies where we think
there is such an obligation to begin to answer this question it's helpful to observe a distinction between
merely complying with the law and obeying the law compliance involves doing what the law says but not
for the reason that it's the law for example when I drive below the speed limit to avoid punishment or
because what happens to want to do so by contrast obeying the law requires acting in park for the
reason that the law prescribes the action for there to be a moral or all things considered reason to obey
the law many philosophers and legal theorists have thought that the institutions that make and enforce
laws in society must have a special kind of authority the authority to prescribe actions to members of
society look confers such authority traditionally many people thought that only God has absolute
authority to tell people what to do so one might think that it's only through the grace of God that some
institutions such as the monarchy have the authority to make and enforce laws that people have an
obligation to follow it's no wonder that while this God based answer to our question failed societies
went to war over disagreements about which Kings or Queens really had the true grace of God as
religious conviction in many parts of the world has become less dogmatic political societies become
more multifaith multicultural and as a result this traditional account of the obligation to obey the law
has fallen out of favor nevertheless most political philosophers and legal theorists still think that the law
merits obedience at least in some societies why here's one popular way to motivate this idea think that
law as an institutionalized solution to coordination problem the problem with finding a set of widely
enforceable social rules compliance with which allows us to reap the rewards of mutual cooperation
while mitigating the risk of harming each others interests then the question becomes what gives us a
reason to obey these rules especially when we could advance our own individual interests by disobeying
them 2 popular answers have to do with consent not actual explicit consent but hypothetical or tacit
consent or precisely hypothetical consent theories say that if someone would have consented under the
right circumstances and that's enough for the law to merit their obedience tacit consent there is say that
certain actions such as living in particular territory not explicitly objecting to particular laws etc are
enough to show that one can sense task link to the loss the main challenge of these consent based
theories is identifying a set of circumstances or actions that plausibly generates hypothetical or tacit
consent another popular answer question appeals the idea of what's fair in our collective cooperation
with one another society might be thought of as a scheme for cooperation in pursuit of mutual benefit if
so then there going to be some ways of participating in society which are fair to one's fellow members in
other ways that are unfair in light of this fair cooperation theories say that obeying the law at least in
society is generally organized around mutual benefit is what fairness requires of us the main challenge
for fair operation theories is to justify the claim that obeying the law really is required for achieving
mutual benefit fairly mere compliance with the law might be all that's required for achieving mutual
benefits Moreover fairness might recommend specific treatment of specific people without requiring
following the law because it's the law in summary political fosters and legal theorists are interested in
what grounds the obligation to obey the laws made by humans in cases where we think we actually
have such an obligation away in the law is more than just complying with it it's taking the fact that some
action is prescribed by law to be a reason to perform it traditional God based attempts to ground such
an obligation are difficult to make convincing in a multifaith context other theories seek to ground this
obligation hypothetical consent tacit consent or duties of Fair treatment in cooperative schemes

THOREAU AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (htt ps://youtu.be/gugnXTN6-D4 )

In March 1845 the United States acquired a new president James K Polk a forceful aggressive political
outsider intent on strengthening his country and asserting its preeminence in front of other world
powers especially Mexico and Great Britain within a year of his inauguration he had declared full scale
war on Mexico because of squabbles over the Texan border and was soon rattling his Saber at Britain
over the ownership of Oregon to complete the picture Polk was a vigorous defender of slavery who
dismissed the arguments of abolitionists as naive and sentimental Polk was a popular president admired
by many for his gung ho manner but a sizable minority of the citizenry disliked him intensely one
especially committed opponent was a writer from Massachusetts called Henry David thorough thorough
is now a Canonical American literary figure studied in every high school for his lyrical masterpiece
Walden but there is another more political side to thorough now usually airbrushed out of his story
which came to the fore in relation to the president thoreau quickly realized that he was opposed to
everything Polk stood for he hated what became the Mexican American war instinctively siding with the
losing Mexican side he was wary of Polk squabbles with Britain and was appalled by the administration's
policy of hunting down and returning runaway slaves to their Masters in the South throws anger against
his president found its impassioned expression in an essay he published in 1849 now known as civil
disobedience at the heart of the essay is the question of what an honest citizen should do about a
president he or she wholeheartedly opposes the prevailing view was that because Polk had won a
majority those who were against him should now fall silent it should it was often said be the duty of a
good citizen to fold away their objections and just respect the will of the majority but this was precisely
the point the row wished to probe and upturn he suggested the true Patriots were not those who
blindly followed their administration they were those who followed their own consciences and in
particular the principles of reason throw wish to redistribute prestige away from blinkered obedience
towards independent thought what marked out and Noble citizen of the Republic a real American was
not in thoreau's view that they respectfully shut up but that they thought for themselves every day of an
administration's life on the basis of just this kind of independent thinking throw signal a radical
opposition to polk's term he denounced the Mexican American war the repatriation of slaves and the
outlook of the government more generally and so as to underlying this opposition throw held back
payment of his taxes in July 1846 he walked into Concorde Massachusetts to get his shoes repaired and
was promptly arrested and thrown into the towns jail the rozza nothing undignified about spending
some time behind bars as he wrote under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for
a just man is a prison all machines have their friction thorough admitted but when injustice is too great
you should let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine through didn't advocate the non
payment of taxes as a rule and in fact are well meaning aren't soon paid his bill the non payment was
just one example of the many nonviolent ways that a democratically elected government could and
should be resisted whenever its actions veer into aggression or unreason an election may settle who the
president might be but it doesn't determine that everything the president does is right or that one
should simply do nothing until the next election above all the ro hated political passivity sarcastically he
wrote there are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war who yet in effect do
nothing to put an end to them who esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin sit down
with their hands in their pockets and say that they know not what to do and do nothing this would not
be throws away how does it become a man to behave towards this American government today I
answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it the row argued that the citizen must never
just resign his conscience to the legislation and put himself at the service of some unscrupulous man in
power throw mocked that most legislators politicians lawyers ministers and officeholders are as likely to
serve the devil without intending it as God the Roe would not be such a servant this most American of
writers knew exactly whom it was right for him to serve his own mind and conscience

POLITICAL THEORY – JOHN RAWLS htt ps://youtu.be/5-JQ17X6VNg

Many of us feel that our societies are a little or even plain totally unfair but we have a hard time
explaining our sense of injustice to the powers that be in a way that sounds rational and without
personal peak or bitterness that's why we need John rawls a 20th century American philosopher who
provides us with a failproof model for identifying what truly might be unfair and how we might gather
support for fixing things born in Baltimore MD USA 1921 roles nickname Jack was exposed and
responded to the injustices of the modern world from a very young age as a child he witnessed it
firsthand shocking poverty in the United States the death of his brothers from an illness he unwittingly
transmitted to them and the horrors and lawlessness of the Second World war all this inspired him to go
into academia he wanted to use the power of ideas to change the unjust world he was living in it was
the publication of a theory of justice in 1971 that properly made rules his name having read and widely
discussed his book Bill Clinton was to label rules the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century
and had him over to the White House for dinner on a regular basis what then does this exemplar of
fairness have to tell the modern world firstly that things as they are now are patently unfair the statistics
all point to the radical unfairness of SoC comparative charts of life expectancy and income projections
direct us to a single overwhelming moral but day today it can be hard to take this unfairness seriously
especially in relation to our own lives that's because so many voices are on hand telling us that if we
work hard and have ambition we can make it rules was deeply aware of how the American dream
seeped through the political system and into individual hearts and he knew its corrosive regressive
influence he was a statistician who knew that the rags to riches tales were over also negligible as not to
warrant serious attention by political theorists indeed mentioning them was merely a clever political
sleight of hand designed to prevent the powerful from having to undertake the necessary task of
reforming society from top to bottom rules understood that debates about unfairness and what to do
about it often get bogged down in arcane details and petty squabbling which means that year after year
nothing quite gets done what rules was therefore after was a simple economical and polemical way to
show people how their societies were unfair and what they might do about it imagine if you would not
you rules intuitively understood that a lot of the reason why societies don't become fairer is that those
who benefit from current injustice a spared the need to think too hard about what it would have been
like to be born in different circumstances so he devised one of the greatest thought experiments in the
history of political thought he called it the veil of ignorance rules asked us to imagine ourselves in a
conscious intelligent state before our own birth but without any knowledge of what circumstances were
going to be born into our future is shrouded by a veil of ignorance hovering high above the planet rules
was fascinated by the Apollo space program we wouldn't know what sort of parents we'd have what our
neighborhoods would be like having schools would perform what the local hospital could do for us and
how the police and judicial systems might treat us and so on the question that rules asked us all to
contemplate is if we knew nothing about where we'd end up what sort of a society would it feel safe to
enter the veil of ignorance stops us thinking about all those who've done quite well and draws our
attention to the appalling risks involved in entering for example US SoC as if it were a lottery without
knowing if you'd wind up the child of an orthodontist in Scottsdale AZ or is the offspring of a black single
mother in the rougher bits of eastern Detroit would any sane birth lottery player really want to take the
gamble of ending up in the society we now have probably not they'd insist that the rules of the entire
game had to be changed otherwise it would be too risky you know what needs to be fixed rules answers
the question for us any sane participant of the veil of ignorance experiment is going to want a society
with a number of things in place they want the schools to be very good the hospitals to function
brilliantly unimpeachable and fair access to the law and decent housing for everyone the veil of
ignorance forces observers to accept that the country they'd really want to be born randomly into would
almost certainly be a version of say Switzerland or Denmark in other words we know what sort of a
society we want to live in we just haven't focused on it properly until now because the choices have
already been made rules is experiment allows us to think more objectively about what a fair society
looks like in its details when addressing major decisions about the allocation of resources we need only
ask ourselves how would I feel about this issue if I was stuck behind the veil of ignorance the fair answer
emerges directly when we contemplate what we'd need to do in order still to be adequately positioned
in the worst case scenario what to do next alot will depend on what's wrong with your society in the
sense rules was usefully UN doctrinaire he recognized at the veil of ignorance experiment throws up
different issues in different contexts in some the priority might be to fix air pollution in others the school
system but crucially rules provide us with a tool to critique our current societies based on a beautifully
simple experiment will know we finally made our societies fair when will be able to say in all honesty
from a position of imaginary ignorance before our births but yes we simply wouldn't mind at all what
kind of circumstances our future parents might have and what sort of neighborhoods we might be born
into the fact that we simply couldn't sanely take on such a challenge now is a measure of how deeply
unfair things remain and therefore of how much we still have left to achieve all this John rawls has
helped us to see