Abstract
The question of (prima facie) formal moral obligation to obey the law
remains a perennial in the garden of philosophy. In this paper I consider
two recent attempts to dig it up by the roots.
The first attempt to settle the question of formal moral obligation to
obey the law I shall consider here appeared in the Yale Law Review
almost a decade ago. Its author, M. B. E. Smith, argued that there is no
such obligation. The article has since been reprinted in a number of
popular philosophical anthologies. Hyman Gross has described it as
one of "the two most influential works on the morality of civil disobedience."
2 The argument has, as far as I can tell, not been criticized in
print.
The other attempt to answer that perennial question appeared in
Bernard Gert's The Moral Rules (originally published seven years
before Smith's article). Gert argued that there is a formal moral obligation
to obey the law. Gert's book seems to have received little attention
from philosophers. His argument for obligation to obey the law has, as
far as I can tell, received no attention at all. Even Smith said nothing
about it. The argument seems to have fallen into that silence all writers
fear.
Yet, it seems to me, Gert has the better answer.