Judy asked:

If something is the law, do I have to obey it? For example, some legislation can be seen as inherently
immoral. I might say that I disagree with war, but if I were drafted to fight, it is law, and I must obey.
But should I?

============

Martin Luther King grapples with this question in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. It is one that
interests me greatly, as a former draft resister. My view, like King's, is that there are certain laws
which are inherently immoral, and that therefore (provided the immorality is serious enough) I am
morally bound to disobey them.

The difficult philosophical question — one that still worries me — is what grounds I have for claiming
that a law is inherently immoral. King had an answer to that one — an immoral law is one that is at
odds with God's Law. However, there are serious problems with basing morality on God's Law, as
Socrates/ Plato pointed out in the Euthyphro.Does God promulgate His law because it is right (in
which case what makes it right is something other than God's word), or is anything that God endorses
therefore right — even the murder of innocent children (cf Abraham and Isaac)?

Of course, many answers have been advanced as to how we can tell what is inherently moral or
immoral, while others have argued that there are no inherently moral truths — that morality is relative.
The latter view makes civil disobedience very problematical, and I don't hold it. But this is not the
place to defend my particular moral theory.

Tim Sprod