Commentary
In 1970, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article entitled “How should we react to unjust laws?”
The author, Ilmar Tammelo, argued that defiance of an allegedly “unjust” law leads to “awkward practical consequences” because “on critically important occasions, it may be extremely difficult to ascertain what is just and what is unjust.”
In contrast, other commentators have argued that there is a right to disobey an unjust law. For example, Marcus Tullius Cicero noted in his De Legibus that “justice is not identical with obedience to the written laws”, and St Augustine of Hippo believed that any “law that is unjust is not seen to be law at all.”…