is something about law that is suggestive of righteousness. The unreflective equation of what is lawful with what is just is not simply characteristic of popular governments, where we might expect the laws to serve the public good. Even a tyrant, where able, will destroy his rivals by lawful means: even a tyrant seeks the appearance of legality. It is as There though we expect the law, by virtue of its being law, to somehow be fair. It is by his manipulation of this sentiment that the tyrant reveals its presence in the souls of most men. It may be true that human beings will accept bad arguments in the face of coercion in order to mute that voice which informs them that their asset has been gained more by threats than persuasion, yet even these bad arguments indicate something of the shape good ones are thought to take. There is an unmistakable tendency toward legalism. As Judith Shklar has pointed out, legalism is not really a doctrine. Rather, it is a disposition. As a disposition, however, it favors certain opinions, certain beliefs, as more intuitively plausible than others. Justice and morality, it comes to seem, are matters of behavior, commanded or forbidden by a complex of rights, duties, and rules. We need not follow Shklare in every aspect of the argument to see that there is something to behold, a tension within common sense that is likely to be reproduced in more reflective analysis, viz. a tension between legalism and the obvious fact that laws can be unjust or prohibit what is necessary. Violations of the law may therefore be