The example does not support the conclusion. If I take an umbrella that belonds to someone else, thinking that it belongs to me, I have not committed a crime, but that is not because private property is unjust or some such, but because I lack the requisite mental state for theft, the intention to permanantly derive someone else of his property.
The idea that an unjust law is "no law at all," although vernerable, will not hold water. There is a perfectly good sociological sense of "law" as an enforceable rule enacted by a social body authoritatively empowered to enact such rules. That enables us to identify, e.g., the Nuremburg Laws of the Nazism, or the slave laws of the antebellum US, as laws. If what is meant by denying that unjust laws are really laws is that they should be resisted, why not say that some laws are unjust and should be resisted, rather than saying they are not "really" laws? --jks
In a message dated Mon, 10 Jul 2000 10:56:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time, <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> writes:
<< On Sat, 08 Jul 2000 12:42:18 -0400 kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net> wrote:
> no, actually, a higher law does back popular sovereignty in the popular
imagination via the declaration of independence in the US.
Higher only in the sense that an unjust law cannot be considered a law at all. For instance, if you take an umbrella in a stand that doesn't belong to you, and you thought that it did - you might be charged with theft. The judge would not conclude that yes, you did steal it but it is ok because it was a mistake, rather, the judge would conclude that no law had been violated in the first place. This is partially what nonviolent action is about. When oppressive authority is based on the law, and the law is unjust, then there is no "law" to violate since injustice and the law cannot coincide from the viewpoint of justice. The higher law here only is only an (of course, imagined) appeal to greater universality of the law itself, in its potential form.
ken
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