Facebook Response 2-6-17: On the Nature of Law, the Necessity for Disobedience and Rebellion

[This was part of a longer back-and-forth with someone on my Facebook wall]

It was more for the point that arrest is not always equated with social censure. And in fact, most people who have historically won change and/or fought against tyranny risked arrest or far worse. Fun fact: all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were risking trial and hanging for treason. The women who marched for the right to vote were often arrested. La Résistance in France during the 40s was not, strictly speaking, legal. Sometimes in history doing what is legal does not equate with doing what is right or necessary. The law is not inherent morality; it is at best an approximation of what society deems right or just. But that sometimes goes off the rails. And sometimes, ironically enough, to protect what is right and moral, or to protect the law even from those who are supposed to enforce it, requires deviating from it. And I admire the people who can recognize this and act accordingly. Even though I am a lawyer (for now), I am not a slave to "the law." If you recall Les Miserables (the novel more than the show, though the show is pretty truthful to the story), you will recall that blind fidelity to the law was Javert's fatal flaw. Law and legality are not ends in and of themselves, but rather hopefully means to an orderly and basically just society. If the law, or those tasks with meting out the law, fail in this, then following the law becomes secondary to ensuring that the ends are maintained.