"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."
According to this statement, each person has a duty to not only obey just laws but also disobey
unjust ones. In my view this statement is too extreme, in two respects. First, it wrongly
categorizes any law as either just or unjust; and secondly, it recommends an ineffective and
potentially harmful means of legal reform.
First, whether a law is just or unjust is rarely a straightforward issue. The fairness of any law
depends on one's personal value system. This is especially true when it comes to personal
freedoms. Consider, for example, the controversial issue of abortion. Individuals with particular
religious beliefs tend to view laws allowing mothers an abortion choice as unjust, while
individuals with other value systems might view such laws as just.
The fairness of a law also depends on one's personal interest, or stake, in the legal issue at
hand. After all, in a democratic society the chief function of laws is to strike a balance among
competing interests. Consider, for example, a law that regulates the toxic effluents a certain
factory can emit into a nearby river. Such laws are designed chiefly to protect public health. But
complying with the regulation might be costly for the company; the factory might be forced to
lay off employees or shut down altogether, or increase the price of its products to compensate
for the cost of compliance. At stake are the respective interests of the company's owners,
employees, and customers, as well as the opposing interests of the region's residents whose
health and safety are impacted. In short, 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 disobeying unjust laws often has
the opposite affect of what was intended or hoped for. Most anyone would argue, for instance,
that our federal system of income taxation is unfair in one respect or another. Yet the end result
of widespread disobedience, in this case tax evasion, is to perpetuate the system. Free-riders
only compel the government to maintain tax rates at high levels in order to ensure adequate
revenue for the various programs in its budget.
14
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. Returning to the abortion example mentioned above, a
person strongly 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 sum, because the inherent function of our laws is to balance competing interests,
reasonable people with different priorities will always disagree about the fairness of specific
laws. Accordingly, 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.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-07-17 | masudhassan17 | 16 | view |
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Discourse Markers used:
['accordingly', 'also', 'but', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'then', 'well', 'while', 'after all', 'for example', 'for instance', 'in short', 'sort of', 'such as', 'as a result', 'as well as', 'in my view']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.258389261745 0.240241500013 108% => OK
Verbs: 0.125838926174 0.157235817809 80% => OK
Adjectives: 0.109060402685 0.0880659088768 124% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0520134228188 0.0497285424764 105% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0201342281879 0.0444667217837 45% => OK
Prepositions: 0.130872483221 0.12292977631 106% => OK
Participles: 0.0335570469799 0.0406280797675 83% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.95291077989 2.79330140395 106% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0318791946309 0.030933414821 103% => OK
Particles: 0.00335570469799 0.0016655270985 201% => OK
Determiners: 0.109060402685 0.0997080785238 109% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.011744966443 0.0249443105267 47% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.010067114094 0.0148568991511 68% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3364.0 2732.02544248 123% => OK
No of words: 537.0 452.878318584 119% => OK
Chars per words: 6.2644320298 6.0361032391 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81386128306 4.58838876751 105% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.418994413408 0.366273622748 114% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.33147113594 0.280924506359 118% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.247672253259 0.200843997647 123% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.158286778399 0.132149295362 120% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95291077989 2.79330140395 106% => OK
Unique words: 291.0 219.290929204 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.541899441341 0.48968727796 111% => OK
Word variations: 67.5881595132 55.4138127331 122% => OK
How many sentences: 25.0 20.6194690265 121% => OK
Sentence length: 21.48 23.380412469 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.4687524211 59.4972553346 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.56 141.124799967 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.48 23.380412469 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.84 0.674092028746 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 37.0 4.94800884956 748% => There are something wrong with the essay format.
Language errors: 0.0 5.21349557522 0% => OK
Readability: 54.627113594 51.4728631049 106% => OK
Elegance: 2.13559322034 1.64882698954 130% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.22828140599 0.391690518653 58% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.090073079094 0.123202303941 73% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0732930442108 0.077325440228 95% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.724290966424 0.547984918172 132% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.282982885519 0.149214159877 190% => Sentences are changing often in a paragraphs.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0860100368867 0.161403998019 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0633643565907 0.0892212321368 71% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.0895774706112 0.385218514788 23% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0736162453401 0.0692045440612 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0727675277447 0.275328986314 26% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0558354642077 0.0653680567796 85% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 10.4325221239 105% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 5.30420353982 245% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.88274336283 20% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 10.0 7.22455752212 138% => OK
Negative topic words: 11.0 3.66592920354 300% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.70907079646 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 21.0 13.5995575221 154% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.