习作-3.31 issue17苦写，求拍

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TOPIC: ISSUE17 - "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."
WORDS: 590          TIME:          DATE: 2010-3-31 21:38:35


In society, remaining on the right side of law is viewed as a virtue, for this is important for a society being a ordered. On the other hand, if a law is considered unjust by most people, it's certainly that an end to this law is necessary. Unjust laws not only bring damage to many individuals but also harm a society's ethic principles. However, I can hardly agree with the speaker's ideal that any individual chose whether to obey the laws solely by his or her own opinions about the laws.


The first reason to support my point is that fairness of law is not definite, it diverse when it comes to different individuals. The same law which is viewed just by one people may be seen as unjust by another people. For example, government's law require residents pay tax to government, and amount of money payed by different ones would be different by their income.  For some low income persons, they see this law very just, because those who earn more should give more money back to the society even to the poor.  However, for those rich ones, they more tend to think that, this kind of laws is unjust, since what they earn comes from their effort year by year, there is no reason to be exploited by government and spend it on those work less hard. In fact , there are numerous such laws in our society. In this case, if an individual are entitled the power to obey what a society's regulations what they think unjust, law will not go on be sacred, as a result, a disordered society comes to us. After all, we can't exclude the possibility that persons always tent to be interested their own benefits which lead them to violate those laws bringing no good to them.

There is another situation that some laws may be unjust to certain individuals, but being examined on the stand of a society, it is reasonable. This kind of laws also should be obeyed by individuals. For example, in many countries, public officials are asked to inform their and their families' property to the public. While this may be unjust to a citizen because every one has rights of holding privacy. However, to keep the any public official being corrupted, this law is viewed just. So, public officials, even president of a country, need to strictly obey it.

Although any single one has no rights to judge whether a law is unjust or unjust, but the combination of great deal persons' opinion should be a criteria for a law whether it still fit a society.  And there do exists unjust laws such as the discrimination of the black in the United States before 1960s, the laws about Chinese people's registered residents. How should we treat these laws? The best way as far as I can come up with is the combination of these people being treated unjustly. A good example comes from what has been done by Martin luther King. Public opinions as a whole should be applied to change those unjust and some outdated laws.

To sum up, ,my view about how to treat unjust law is that, when we find a law unjust to ourselves, on one hand, we should obey it in order to keep society orderly, on the on the other hand, we should care what other people think about this law. If, many people think it unjust, then some effort should be made to encourage the legislation committee to change it.