ISSUE17 [SHINING SEP]

zeelichUID: 2194744

17"There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a society has a responsibility to obey just laws and, even more importantly, to disobey and resist unjust laws."

Fundamentally I agree with the statement that every individual in the society has responsibility to obey just laws and disobey unjust laws. While the reason for disobey the unjust laws lies in that unjust laws would befuddle our mind and make us distrust the society, it would be necessary for us to wary that there exists a premise to this claim: how we define just and unjust laws, and what path should we take to disobey and resist unjust laws.

To begin with, as we know that in ancient time people live in an barbarian envirionment which lacked of laws to regulate their hehaviors. Laws are dispensable for stable and rapid development of a civilized society in that we human needs regulation to limit our own desires and take our responsibility to advance the society that currently our high civilized society would be attributable to our well-developed legal system and populace's awareness of compliance to the law. Yet even today there would inevitably exist some deficiencies in our laws that it would be needed to continuouslly amend and append the laws that unjust laws would always parallel the development of just laws. Hence it is more important for individual to disobey unjust laws in that it would be necessary to defend our equal rights. For example, in the United States every state has ability to enect their own statutes, which could not violate the national constitution. If the state statutes touch the people's interests, such as irrationally raise the tax rate or unreasonable limitations, we may claim that this kind of statutes would be unjust laws for the reason that they hazard our legal rights. Moreover, experience informs me that without the sound of opposite side hardly could something take a significant improvement; and similarly, to disobey unjust laws would probably help enhancing the quality of our legal system. Here we may arrive at the point that it is necessary for us to obey just laws, and more significantly, to disobey unjust laws.

Yet we should keep vigilant that sometimes we may trap in the bog of the bewilderment of the question: how to tell the definition of and differencies between just and unjust laws. Most time we may find that it is compelling to sacrifice some minority's rights to preserve the mojority's interests, and hence the minority would consider the laws, which risk their power and privilege, to be unjust. For instance, the prisoners would be divested of their voting and electing right according to the laws, and their freedom is strictly limited. However no one would claim that these regulations would be unjust laws for the reason that prisoners are those who commited crimes and do harm to the society, and limitation of their behaviors would actually be beneficial to themselves and society. At the individual level, these prisoners could carefully repent themselves and hold the wish to commence a new life; at the social level, these regulations would be didactic to the populace to eliminate, or to some degree decline, their intentions to crime. Therefore, the seemingly unjust laws are indeed significant to maintain a steady envirionment for the development of the society. Further, under specific condition an individual may lack of the ability to identify the bound between just and unjust laws, and it is quite possible that they may violate the just laws. For example, during period of the occurance of natural disasters, for surviving people would behave granted to the human instinct, which, to various extents, always offense the laws in that human instincts contain some negative attributes, such as greediness, heinousness, and the like. People would omit social regulations and moral boundary at such special time, and not simply unjust laws but just laws would both be violated. Moreover, another problem confront with us is that how we disobey and resist unjust laws. Lacking of appropriate guidance we may escalate a modest resistance into a severe social upheavel. Overthrowing the unjust laws would be served as excuses for saboteurs to take antisocial behaviors, such as violent conflict with the government, armed rebellion, and so forth. If so, the shortcomings of disobeying unjust laws would offset its benefits.

In sum, albeit it is necessary for us to obey just laws and disobey unjust laws, the definition of just and unjust laws and the feasible method to resist the unjust laws should be taken into consideration. Unjust laws, to some degree, always serve as mirror that reflect the deficiencies of the just laws, and also as impetus which propel our society along the path of moderate change to great advance.

xuxinyunUID: 2198143

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[ 本帖最后由 xuxinyun 于 2006-8-22 21:02 编辑 ]

zeelichUID: 2194744

谢谢啦