The courthouse where I work is called The Hall of Justice. It's a misnomer, which I suppose is vaguely entertaining.
What is more entertaining, however, is what is inscribed in two-foot tall letters on the front of the edifice:
Obedience to Law is Liberty.
Right. And war is peace
11 comments:
And work will make you free.
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity"
Gimme a break. Anarchy (i.e., the state of things without law) is not freedom.
Who said anything about anarchy???
The point is that without law, no one can be free. What good is freedom from law if we don't have freedom from each other.
Conversely, too many laws make us slaves.
I think the unspoken view is that since our laws derived from the consent of the governed . . . .
That's the unspoken view of the governed?
Speaking as one of the governed (not to mention a criminal defense attorney), that's just crazy talk!
No. The statement presupposes that the law itself derives from the consent of the governed and is therefore clothed with legitimacy and is not an instrument of tyranny.
The point is that without some order, there can be no freedom. And so long as the laws are just (assumed of course), abiding by them creates freedom.
Think of it this way--look at Michael Jordan. Basketball's rules gave him the freedom to work his magic on the court--without those rules, there would have been no magic. Without order in our society (created by law), there could be very little of the things that make our society.
That's what the statement is getting at. It's kind of in the same vein as "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."
Most recent anon -- I don't necessarily disagree with you. I was just being flip and fun. The problem, of course, is that there are many laws that are not necessarily just. Not these days, anyway. And I think that's really the root of what I was getting at.
(Though if I'm being honest, all I was *really* getting at was a quick turn of phrase.)
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis to you and me), the democratically-elected governors of mid 20th century Germany, passed large numbers of laws which contributed nothing to anyone's liberty and which no moral person could possibly obey. Obedience to law is NOT liberty. Whoever had the idiotic notion that laws were always just and right?
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