Guido 1
10/4/14
Comp/Lit/1
Final Draft Is It Justifiable to Break the Law?
There were times in history when breaking the law was justified. I believe that if you could break the law you should. Great leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr broke the law and changed the world for the better. Breaking the law is justifiable and acceptable when the law violates human rights and conscience. Certainly, rules are established for us to follow. However, we as human beings should be able to differentiate from right and wrong incase laws need to be violated for the right cause. Even with hard consequences, breaking the law can be justified, considering the situations and the purposes.
Justification of the of laws depends on the situation, not on the rules and regulations. In certain places of the world there are extraordinary laws that might not be acceptable to all. We cannot ignore the fact that in the civil wars and world wars era the abolitionists were breaking the laws, which surely had a cause but the killing of innocent people and the millions of lives lost do not have an explanation. Such violation in today’s era, cannot be justified (A Theory of justice 1972, 1975).

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Laws are simply human built, someone somewhere proposed them and implemented those for a reason and sometimes these reasons are completely not justified. Killing is one of the best examples for such unjustified rules where a member of a family is killed by the social groups or any other members, due to the belief that the victim has brought dishonor to the family or society. Obeying blindly and blind faith are the major causes of such disgraceful activities happening in the society. Murders simply are the worst violation of human rights. People surely have the right to choose for themselves but unfortunately they don’t and they kill. People, mostly Hindus, believe in shamans and willingly and unwillingly they commit serious crimes which they think is right but which actually is wrong and that is unjustifiable (Threats and Offers 1986).
Unjust laws do exist in society, but that has to be removed slowly rather than protesting and making a mess out of everything. Most of the time breaking laws becomes a habit. For example when your wife is dying because you cannot afford the drug to cure her you steal the drug, or when you’re having a heart attack and you are speeding and a cop pulls you over. Such cases can be justified yes, the person has to get punished but the punishment can be reduced to minimum as that stealing or speeding was for a purpose and such reasons seem clearly justifiable (Threats and Offers 1986).
Breaking the law is no crime but the way you carry out might be one. People oppose by civil disobedience, vigilantism, and terrorism whereas strikes and peace marches are other ways Guido 3 to peacefully fight. We must be able to raise our voices for unjust things happening in society and which unfortunately prevails until now. For a change to occur we must first of all change ourselves and should not be quiet with the fear of consequences if we are fighting for the right. Such disobediences or violations, without any doubt are to be considered justifiable. Not all law breaking is justified, but some as mentioned previously with situations and purposes are.

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Work Cited
Rawls, John “A Theory of justice”, Oxford: Oxford Press, 1972, 1975.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and "Civil Disobedience". New York: Signet Classics, 1980.
Vinit Hasker, Civil Disobedience, Threats and Offers: Gandhi and Rawls, Oxford: /
Oxford University Press, 1986,
Wagenknecht, Edward. Henry David Thoreau, What Manner of Man? Amherst: University of / Massachusetts Press, 1981.