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assaults that make law necessary. In any society there will be disputes:
about how much water farmers may take from the river to
irrigate their crops, about the ownership of land, or the custody
of a child, about the control of pollution, and the level of taxation.
Some settled decision-procedure is necessary for resolving
such disputes economically and speedily, or else the parties to the
dispute are likely to resort to force. Almost any established decision-
procedure is better than a resort to force, for when force is
used people get hurt. Moreover, most decision-procedures produce
results at least as beneficial and just as a resort to force.
So laws and a settled decision-procedure to generate them
are a good thing. This gives rise to one important reason for
obeying the law. By obeying the law, I can contribute to the
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Ends and Means
respect in which the established decision-procedure and the
laws are held. By disobeying I set an example to others that
may lead them to disobey too. The effect may multiply and
contribute to a decline in law and order. In an extreme case it
may lead to civil war.
A second reason for obedience follows immediately from this
first. If law is to be effective - outside the anarchist's utopia -
there must be some machinery for detecting and penalizing lawbreakers.
This machinery will cost something to maintain and
operate, and the cost will have to be met by the community. If
I break the law the community will be put to the expense of
enforcement.
These two reasons for obeying the law are neither universally
applicable nor conclusive. They are not, for instance, applicable
to breaches of the law that remain secret. If, late at night when
the streets are deserted, I cross the road against the red light,
there is no one to be led into disobedience by my example, and
no one to enforce the law against so crossing. But this is not
the kind of illegality we are interested in.
Where they are applicable, these two reasons for obedience
are not conclusive, because there are times when the reasons
against obeying a particular law are more important than the
risks of encouraging others to disobey or the costs to the community
of enforcing the law. They are genuine reasons for obeying,
and in the absence of reasons for disobeying, are sufficient
to resolve the issue in favour of obedience; but where there are
conflicting reasons, we must assess each case on its merits in
order to see if the reasons for disobeying outweigh these reasons
for obedience. If, for instance, illegal acts were the only way of
preventing many painful experiments on animals, of saving significant
areas of wilderness, or of prodding governments into
increasing overseas aid, the importance of the ends would justify
running some risk of contributing to a general decline in obedience
to law.
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Practical Ethics
DEMOCRACY
At this point some will say: the difference between Oskar Schindler's
heroic deeds and the indefensible illegal actions of the
Animal Liberation Front, Operation Rescue, and the opponents
of the Franklin dam is that in Nazi Germany there were no legal
channels that Schindler could use to bring about change. In a
democracy there are legal means of ending abuses. The existence
of legal procedures for changing the law makes the use of illegal
means unjustifiable.
It is true that in democratic societies there are legal procedures
that can be used by those seeking reforms; but this in itself does
not show that the use of illegal means is wrong. Legal channels
may exist, but the prospects of using them to bring about change
in the foreseeable future may be very poor. While one makes
slow and painful progress - or perhaps no progress at all -
through these legal channels, the indefensible wrongs one is
trying to stop will be continuing. Prior to the successful struggle
to save the Franklin River, an earlier political campaign had
been fought against another dam proposed by the Tasmanian
Hydro-Electric Commission. This dam was opposed because it
would flood a pristine alpine lake, Lake Peddar, situated in a
national park. This campaign employed more orthodox political
tactics. It failed, and Lake Peddar disappeared under the waters
of the dam. Dr Thomas Gennarelli's laboratory had carried out
experiments for several years before the Animal Liberation Front
raided it. Without the evidence ofthe stolen videotapes, it would
probably still be functioning today. Similarly, Operation Rescue
was founded after fourteen years of more conventional political
action had failed to reverse the permissive legal situation regarding
abortion that has existed in the United States since the
Supreme Court declared restrictive abortion laws unconstitutional
in 1973. During that period, according to Operation Rescue's
Gary Leber, 'twenty-five million Americans have been
"legally" killed'. From this perspective it is easy to see why the
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Ends and Means
existence of legal channels for change does not solve the moral
dilemma. An extremely remote possibility of legal change is not
a strong reason against using means more likely to succeed. The
most that can follow from the mere existence oflegitimate channels
is that, since we cannot know whether they will prove
successful until we have tried them, their existence is a reason
for postponing illegal acts until legal means have been tried and
have failed.
Here the upholder of democratic laws can try another tack:
if legal means fail to bring about reform, it shows that the
proposed reform does not have the approval of the majority of
the electorate; and to attempt to implement the reform by illegal
means against the wishes of the majority would be a violation