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."
I agree with the contention broadly that every individual in society has a responsibility to obey just laws and disobey unjust laws. However, the speaker overlooks the argument suffers from several problems. My points of contention with the speaker involve the fundamental objectives and nature of research as discussed below.
The first thing we should take into account is that which kind of law can be called just. Many people may say that the law made by government is the just one. Admittedly, government has more possibility to create law based on fair and knowable ,but we can not deny it that some dominators creates laws for the sake of their own benefits in history. Uncountable jews were cruelly murdered during WW2 by the permit of the law of Nazi Germany. The ex-resident of Iraq killed the people disobeyed the rule made by him in order to make this country become a autarchy one. A non-democracy government has more possibility to control people's behavior for the benefit for the government itself, the law has become a tool for the exploitation towards people heavily.
The key point of whether the law is just or unjust does not depend on who create it but the purpose of this law. The main purpose of the law is to protect a group of people's benefits. But the gain of some people always means the loss of other ones. In my opinion, the law serves for the benefits of the whole society and the society's future can be really called law of justice. For example, under the ask of the environment-protecting law, the factory must not emit the polluted water into a nearby river .But if the factory do what the law asks ,it should spend lots of money on the water-ptotecting project. The factory must enhance the price of this product in order to gain the same profit compared with before. The product has less competition ability in the market. If this factory has a big donation in tax to the local government, the local economy condition will be influenced. If the local government did not ask the factory to obey this law in order to protect local benefits of this time, every individual know such decision is wrong and should be punished.
If the law is just based on the public interest, it is every individual's responsibility to obey it. For the sake of the whole society's progress, there must exists a kind of rule to restrict the behavior of every member. Just as a solider in the army ,he should do whatever his officer urges him to, although he may think that as a false one. If the solider just obey what is right and disobey the wrong one based on his own understanding. The army's only destination is lost.
Even if the law is judged by some people a unjust one. The aptitude approach fight against that is calling the government for rebuilding the law. Admittedly, there is no perfect thing in the world, every law has its flaw. the simply response of disobey and resist may result in potential harmful society problems. The expense of success in resisting a unjust law sometimes is the disobeying of a just law. For example, some states may restrict the numbers of immigrants inflexibly, some people may think it is unfair for them, so they decide to fake a passport to cover up their real identification. But some other people may use to the fake passport for the illegal purpose such as smuggle and crime.
To sum up, because the real function of our law is to balance the competing interests, different people always have disagreement about the fairness of laws. Accordingly , radical action such as resistance or disobedience is rarely justified merely by one's personal interests. And in any event, disobedience is never justifiable when the legal rights or safety or innocent people are harmed as a result.