HKB
2 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: equity, mercy, and pardon · rights and liberties · remedy worse than evil · just laws · custom and unwritten law · contracts, oaths, and obligation · constitution as evil · conscience · common good · break the law
Usually: argument (2) · crisis of belief (1) · injustice endured (1) · censure (1) · detachment (1) · exhortation (1)
“If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience · precept
“a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · insight
Aquinas continues by holding that human laws bind in conscience when they are just—aiming at the common good, proportioning burdens, and not exceeding the lawgiver’s power—while unjust laws bind only to avoid scandal.
Whether Human Law Binds a Man in Conscience? Objection 1: It would seem that human law does not bind man in conscience. For an inferior power has no jurisdiction in a court of higher power. But the power of man, which frames human law, is beneath the Divine power. Therefore human law cannot impose its precept in a Divine court, such as is the court of conscience. Obj. 2: Further, the judgment of conscience depends …
Thoreau presents unjust laws as grounds for immediate transgression, argues the government makes remedies worse, rejects petitions as too slow, and states that the Constitution itself is the evil needing resistance.
not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the *individual*, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they …