ISSUE17ARES战队第4次作业

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ISSUE17ARES战队第4次作业
AMADIS 第4次的作业
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."
17． 有两种法律：公平的和不公平的。社会中的每个人都应该遵守公平的法律，更重要的是，不遵守或者违抗不公平的法律
提纲
We usually classify types of laws as just or unjust.
1 Laws and regulations are set up along with the entrenchment of a government serving as a means to control the country. Protect human rights, keep social justice,
2 Since laws are built up under the power of government, which represents the public interest whereas run by a few individuals, it is quite possible that laws are constituted in the name of representing the majority while on the contrary in a few individuals favor.
3 Facing unjust laws, every individual has the very responsibility to resist them. But disobeying unjust laws often has the opposite effect of what was intended or hoped for.
4 No matter that whether every individual could reach an agreement on unjust or not, one point is important that we should put forward our opinions toward unjust laws.
举例：穆斯林的一夫多妻制，农村和偏远山区的盗版软件问题，反越战游行暴力，堕胎。

正文：
According to this statement, the author stated that each person has a duty to not only obey laws but also unjust ones. In my view, this statement is really in the extreme, there are two failures exposed in the author’s statement.
First and basically, we can see that it is wrongly categorize any law as either just or unjust, and secondly, it provides an ineffective and potentially harmful means of legal reform.

In the first place, whether a law is just or unjust is rarely a oversimplified issue. As the encyclopedia write, law, body of official rules and regulations, that is used to govern a society and to control the behavior of its members. The fairness of any law depends on the value system of the society and its members. This is especially true when it comes to personal freedoms. Consider, for example, the controversial issue of polygamy. Individuals with particular religious beliefs tend to view laws allowing having more than one spouse at one time as unjust such as in Muslim societies, which is closely linked to the religion of Islam, while individuals with other systems might view such laws as just. The fairness of a law also depends on one’s personal interest, or involvement, in the legal issue at hand. After all, in a democratic society，law serves a variety of functions, including to strike a balance among competing interest. Consider, for example, a law that regulates the pirate software products can be used in personal computer. Such laws are designed chiefly to protect knowledge industry and Information Technology industry. But complying with the regulation might be costly for the low-income people, especially those rural and undeserved younger. It can not be imagined that in the Tibet, a farmer spent all his stockpiles by a $3000 cheaply computer for his children. But when he went to operate the computer, he had been told he need to paid $4000 for the original system software. If they do, the farmer might be forced to sell the farmland and livestock, or increase the price of the agriculture products to compensate for the cost of compliance. At stake are the respective interests of the company’s owners, employees, and customers. In brief, the fairness of the law is subjective, depending largely on how one’s personal interests are affected by it.

The second fundamental problem with the statement is that facing unjust laws, every individual has the very responsibility to resist them, but disobeying unjust laws often has the opposite effect of what was intended or hoped for or dreamed for. There is no better example of the Anti-Vietnam War, thousands of demonstrators protested the unjust war in Vietnam at rally and march in Washington DC. As U.S. troops mobilize for the invasion, protesters are becoming crazy, during the anti-war march they spoiling the national flag, damaging urban infrastructures, impeding traffic and creating violence incidences. Yet the end led to widespread national paralysis, in this case violent to return riot, is to perpetuate the system.

Yet another fundamental problem with the statement is that by justifying a violation of one sort of law we find ourselves on a slippery slope toward sanctioning all types of illegal behavior,, including egregious criminal conduct. Take the example of abortion, a person aggressively opposed to the freedom-of-choice position might maintain that the illegal blocking of access to an abortion clinic amounts to justifiable disobedience. However, it is a precariously short leap from this sort of civil disobedience to physical confrontations with clinic workers, then to the infliction of property damage, then to the bombing of the clinic and potential murder.

In conclusion, since the inherent function of our laws to balance competing interests, reasonable people with different priorities will invariably disagree about the fairness of specific laws. Correspondingly, radical action such as resistance or disobedience is rarely justified merely by one's subjective viewpoint or personal interests. And in any event, disobedience is never justifiable when the legal rights or safety of innocent people are jeopardized as a result.

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