Comments Elsewhere

Brian: And it is respect for the rule of law in general. Sure there are many unjust laws but that doesn’t seem particularly relevant to whether or not we should respect the rule of law per se.

lirelou was explicitly using “accordance with the rule of law” as a grounds for restricting the decriminalization of immigration, apparently because the restrictions under which immigrants have been suffering up until this point must continue to be enforced, just to be fair, or something. It does seem to me that this is one thing that people sometimes mean when they talk about respect for the rule of law — that is, systematically and carefully enforcing the terms of actually existing laws, whether or not they are just. The idea is that if you refuse to enforce a law based on your substantive disagreement with it, you are corrupting the legal process by inserting arbitrary discretion into what should be an impersonal mechanism. If that is what is meant, then it ought to be clear that “the rule of law” deserves respect only to the extent that, and in such cases as, the laws being enforced actually are just laws: consistency in justice is a virtue, but consistency in evil is only relentlessness. Where the promulgated law is unjust it should be ignored or defied, as openly, in as many cases, and by as many officials, as possible, since scrupulous enforcement of unjust laws just means scrupulous criminality against the innocent, and to hell with anything that says otherwise.

It may be that you have something different in mind when you say that you respect the rule of law. The phrase is a pretty fluid one, and more than one meaning has been assigned to it. For example, maybe you mean the (perfectly respectable) idea that the grounds for an act of legal force should be public, consistent, and general. Or maybe you mean something else. But if that’s the case, then given the argumentative context in which lirelou was using the phrase, I doubt that (s)he and you mean the same thing by it.

Randall: The liberal tradition incorporates both respect for the rule of law and refusal to comply with unjust laws.

Well. The fact that a tradition incorporates two claims does not guarantee that the claims are actually compatible with one another. Maybe the tradition is making incoherent demands. Lots of traditions do.

That said, I’d need to know more of what you mean by “the rule of law” to say anything substantial here, for reasons similar to the ones I outlined above. If it means that you should comply with just laws and ignore or defy unjust ones, then I wonder whether you’re using “the rule of law” as anything other than another name for political justice as such.