Darrell Fischer

Mrs. McCabe

APLAC

January 31, 2018

Prompt: Think about breaking the law. Then write an essay that defends, challenges, or

qualifies Thoreau’s claim that people should break laws that are unjust. Use specific,

appropriate evidence to develop your position.

Laws are meant to be followed. At least from the perspective of the government, if you

enact a law, it should be followed. After all, isn’t that what laws are for? While this may have

been the original purpose of laws, several prominent philosophers argue against this idea,

notably Henry David Thoreau. They propose the question: “Should we follow laws that are

unjust?” And the answer is no, but only when the cost to society does not outweigh the gain to

society.

Blindly following laws with no consideration to their ethical standards has nearly always

lead to atrocity. Take, for example, the Nuremberg Trials. After World War II, and after the

Holocaust had ended, prominent Nazi figures were brought to trial in the Nuremberg Trials. As

none of them had an actual defense for why they assisted in killing 6 million people in Nazi

concentration camps, many of them decided on a different approach. Most said they were just

following orders. While this may have been true, the fact remains that they played a direct role

in killing millions of people, regardless of the order came from them or someone higher up.

Thus (quite obviously), they didn’t act morally. While Thoreau certainly would agree this

shouldn’t have been an adequate defense, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant also supports this
point. The categorical imperative is the idea that we should act as we would wish the rest of

society act, and in fact, it’s necessary that an ethical person do so. Kant argues that any truly

ethical person must follow the categorical imperative, acting ethically and rationally at all times.

If a law is unjust, then to be an ethical person, you must disobey that law, according to the

categorical imperative, because the circumstances of a law being present do not change what is

truly ethical. To apply the idea of the categorical imperative, look at the fight for civil rights in

1960’s America. Following protests in Birmingham, the city government banned

demonstrations, sit-ins, and protests. However, civil rights activists, including Martin Luther

King Jr., decided not to follow these laws, viewing them to be unjust because their foundation

was racism and silencing of the individual. This follows Kant’s categorical imperative because

they continued what they believed to be the ethical course of action (protesting against racism)

regardless of whether there was law against this course of action or not. So rationally, when a

law conflicts with the categorical imperative, the law should be disobeyed.

While this view may be neat, clean, and ethical, issues arise when you ask the question:

“What constitutes ethical?”. It is for this reason that laws should only be broken when there is

not significant society consequences to that action. Of course, moral standards are preserved

under the categorical imperative, but it ignores the consequences of these actions, and this is a

result of the differing standards of what is considered ethical. Take, for example, Thoreau’s

very own action of withholding his taxes to protest the Mexican-American war. While Thoreau

may have been following his categorical imperative (that financing unnecessary wars is ethically

wrong), he also withheld tax revenue for running the government, funding infrastructure

development, expanding America’s reach to the West, and preserving rights through supreme
court decisions. Only a small portion of the money Thoreau would have sent to the

government would have been used to fund the Mexican-American war, whereas the vast

majority would have been used for beneficial government programs, and thus, the cost to

society was likely greater than the benefit, and thus, Thoreau should have paid his taxes. The

differing standards of ethical present themselves when considering the assassination of

Archduke Ferdinand, the event that started World War I. Gavrilo Princip, the Archduke’s

assassin, was a member of the Black Hand society, whose goal was to combine certain

provinces in Austria into Yugoslavia, and they viewed this as the ethical outcome. He ignored

the laws against murder and treason to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand, and inadvertently

started the first World War. While he may have seen his actions as ethical because they were

accomplishing his ultimate goal, the fact remains that the cost to society in the lives lost during

World War I as well as the political and economic chaos that ensued, was not worth upholding

his moral standards.