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A student in my prison class asked why anyone should obey an unjust law. What did Aquinas say?

Brian Otieno Ouma Fellow
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LawAmericanMedieval ChristianNatural lawScholasticism#aquinas#civil-disobedience#natural-law#unjust-law
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Its coordinates: 6.2 Philosophy of Law

This came up in my prison reading class. Last week we read part of Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he says, following Augustine, that an unjust law is no law at all, and appeals to Aquinas for how to tell a just law from an unjust one.

One of the men, who is very sharp, said: "So if a law is unjust I can just ignore it. Then everyone in here was right, because every one of us thinks the law that put us here was unjust."

Everyone laughed, but it was a serious question and I did not have a good answer. I know Aquinas only from summaries. Did he really think unjust laws are not laws and need not be obeyed? Or is it more careful than that? I would like to bring something accurate back to the class next week.

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  1. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    It is more careful than that, and your student has put his finger on exactly why.

    In the Summa Theologiae (I-II, question 95) Aquinas says human law has the nature of law to the extent that it is derived from the natural law. If it departs from it, it is no longer law but a corruption of law. That is the line King draws on.

    But in question 96, article 4, he asks whether human law binds in conscience, and the answer is graded. Laws can be unjust in two ways. Some are contrary to the human good: they serve the ruler's greed or vanity, exceed his authority, or impose burdens unequally. These do not bind in conscience, except perhaps to avoid scandal or disturbance. In other words, you may still have good reason to obey them, because disobedience has costs to others. Other laws are contrary to the divine good, for instance commanding idolatry, and these must never be obeyed.

    So for your student: Aquinas does not say "ignore any law you dislike". He says an unjust law loses its claim on your conscience, which is not the same as losing every reason to comply. And whether a law is unjust is judged by its relation to the common good, not by whether it caught you.

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    1. Brian Otieno Ouma

      Fellow

      Thank you, Ikechukwu. That will work well. I can already hear the follow-up though: "scandal or disturbance to whom?" They will point out that the disturbance is usually to people more comfortable than them.

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Other answers

  1. Andrés Zuluaga

    Fellow

    It may help to show them what King himself added, because it answers your student directly. King insists that someone who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly, and while accepting the penalty. That is the opposite of private exemption. The willingness to take the punishment is how you show the community that you are appealing to its conscience rather than serving yourself.

    In Colombia I have interviewed former combatants who were sure their cause was just. The difference King draws, between open disobedience that accepts consequences and private law-breaking, is the one that mattered most to the victims.

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  2. Aoife Kilbride

    Fellow

    A small addition. King's line is actually closer to Augustine than to Aquinas; it comes from Augustine's early dialogue On Free Choice of the Will. Aquinas is more nuanced, as Ikechukwu shows. He even says, in the same part of the Summa, that a tyrannical law still has something of the character of law, in so far as it aims at people being good relative to that regime, while being, absolutely speaking, a perversion of law. That "in so far as" is very Thomist, and your class may enjoy it.