How do we deal with unjust laws?

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If there is a law we feel is unjust, what do we do? Do we break it, or is obeying the only option?

Examples: Marijuana and abortion laws in most red states. Can an abortion be done safely at PP or a similar clinic without anybody going to jail? Can people (especially people of color) smoke weed recreationally and the cops do nothing?

This is a primary reason for overcrowded prisons and voting disenfranchisement.

Waiting until the next election is futile, because a Democrat has no chance in Texas or Florida, let alone Idaho or Alabama. And many of the blue states have astronomical costs of living, so relocation is not an option for many.

What else can be done in a time where law enforcement is not much more than domestic terrorism, as we've seen in Minneapolis and Memphis over the last few years, and laws get more and more draconian?

I probably wouldn’t break an unjust law, if at all possible, because I don’t fancy going to prison.

If I needed an abortion, though, I would find a way to get one. Unfortunately, getting one safely for many people is nearly impossible.

The problem is that these laws are more about legislating morality and controlling people than doing anything positive to improve peoples' lives or keep people safe.

Plus I left the GIS field (I am studying for the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam), because city and county governments make up most of the field, and in Texas, oftentimes the only job openings available are for police officers, presumably to enforce Abbott's far-right agenda.

If you were a smoker you would have already answered the question. People have never gone to prison for simple possession of marijuanna or lost their right to vote. The laws involving marijuana are not getting more draconian. The move is less draconian.

Personally I think marijuana is a joke. Making it illegal gave it a cultural allure and gives it a lifestyle. It seems rather ridiculous to me. I could care less if people smoke it and look silly.

As far as abortion goes, I wouldn’t advise that you start giving them. That would be illegal in many circumstances. You generally aren’t breaking the law by getting one or trying to obtain one.

Is the law really unjust, though? I mean...personally, I think a lot of anti-drug laws are pretty stupid. If you want to destroy yourself by frying your brain, be my guest. That's your business. Getting stoned doesn't exactly enable the best decisions, but whatever. You're free to be an fuzzy-headed zombie if that's what you want.

I suppose the only rational interest anyone can have in banning drugs would have to be to protect their children from any perceived negative influence from using those drugs. If you don't want your child smoking pot, you have the right to deny them pot. Making drugs widely available would rob parents of their right to raise their kids as they see best. It would make sense to criminalize certain drugs or restrict them to majority-aged adults.

But for the sake of argument...

One of the problems of marijuana use is that while you might WANT or PREFER to smoke pot, you aren't going to die if you don't. I don't smoke pot. But I do drink beer. I've almost run out of beer, and I'm coming up a little short on already with a couple weeks left before my next paycheck. So that means I may have to live without beer for a little while. It's ok...I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not going to get DT's. I might have trouble getting to sleep since I'm used to having a beer before bed. The point is I just have to deal. I don't need it to survive. We have clean running water in the house, so I'm going to be fine. But since I'm accustomed to having it, it is legal, and it is available, does that mean I'm entitled to it any time I want? No. Is it unjust that I have to live without beer for a couple of weeks? Some might say that living without beer is a travesty, but in all seriousness I won't die without it.

The law grants me no entitlement to beer, so does that make the law unjust?

Pot is the same way. It isn't essential. Moreover, there are federal laws against pot that are simply not being consistently enforced. You can live without it. You aren't forced to buy it. You most likely won't be prosecuted for a first offense possession for a small amount for your personal use. So...exactly how do you intend to leverage a little civil disobedience to make your point and expand recreational pot use?

It's not a hill to die on. Start a grassroots (pun intended) movement to nationally leegalize it and only elect officials who promise to decriminalize pot. That's all you can do.

The kinds of unjust laws that you CAN do something about are civil rights kinds of issues. It's what I like to call "spittin' on the sidewalk" kinds of offenses. Let's say there's only one grocery store in your town. You get denied service because you're black. So you say, fine, I'll buy my own grocery store and black folks can buy whatever they want from my store. Of course you make a profit, you sell superior products, and even white customers prefer your store. But the town authorities decide they don't want a black grocery store doing business competing against a white store and shut you down. Well, you can't just not eat, so you go to the white store for groceries. Same thing happens.

Now, you have a choice. It's clearly unjust if you aren't allowed to do business on your own but then can't get access to essential goods and services. That's statism. That's being unreasonable. And it's a violation of civil rights. You can burn down the grocery store so NOBODY can get any food. You can try to take a white grocery store owner to court, but you'll see when a local judge or jury sides with the owner you won't get very far that way.

Rather than violence, you can choose passive resistance. They won't let you in? Fine. EVERY SINGLE DAY go down with a group of your friends and sit down in front of the entrance. Force people to go around you to go shopping. And when people complain they can't get in the store because of you, force them to call the police. When the police try to remove you, just go completely limp. MAKE THEM physically pick you up and move you. And keep doing it. And keep doing it. Pretty soon what will happen is people will recognize that the reason why you protest is because you are being denied essential goods based on your skin color, that you are not a violent person, and that the police and local justice system are bullies. Just give it a little time. When you are publicly mistreated and humiliated day after day after day, you'll gradually build sympathy for your cause. Sooner or later, unjust laws and behavior will HAVE to be confronted and your civil rights restored.

It worked for MLK, it worked for Ghandi. Consistently-waged satyagraha never fails.

Marijuana laws are a form of treason, as the original Americans (the founding fathers) were pro-hemp. Marijuana laws were made by Capitalists who wanted to create a worker-force (and also transition America towards a consumer capitalist culture). They were concerned that marijuana might reduce worker-productivity and so they lobbied and bribed politicians to vote against hemp. The America you see today is not the "normal america' that was created long ago, but something else.

As for abortion, it is murder, and murder is unjust.

Not many, but a minority of people have been jailed purely on possession charges.

As for the OP's question, I think the answer is complicated. Depends on how unjust the law is, how certain the individual can be in their judgement of its unjustness, the nature of unexpected consequences of wrecking the effectiveness of a seemingly bad law, the risks to the disobeyer, etc. So for me it would depend on the particular law and the circumstances. I certainly wouldn't lift a finger to help the law punish somebody who was doing no harm.

I would be very surprised if you could find a person in the USA that went to prison for a simple possession of marijuana charge. Prison is different than jail. Simple possession is different than having a large quantity, or having a previous offense.

The only way it is a felony is if you are distributing it. The only way you lose your right to vote is if it is felony.

Granted some people have violated suspended sentences for all kinds of minor things. Some people are wanted for more serious matters and get picked up for something simple.

Some people may be molesting little children, etc… and be held on a lesser charge because the more serious charge hasn’t been proven yet. But … I can’t imagine that happening with simple possession. I don’t even think simple possession (1st offense) is punishable with jail time.

Some people might be disorderly and be a threat to themselves or others and not be able to be identified. That is possible but being disorderly is a separate charge.

It did happen to Brittany Griner but she was in Russia. Supposedly Russia’s stance on marijuana makes others look like child’s play. I imagine it is the same with the Phillipines. Police can kill drug addicts on the spot in the Phillipines.

Last edited by JimJohn on 18 Feb 2023, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Damn, I used to like the Phillipines. Maybe we should just let China invade them? Might be a tactical disadvantage though in the future.

Supposedly that was allowed with President’s Duerte’s war on drugs. I don’t really know. No one seems to dispute it. Supposedly, it didn’t affect tourists. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be finding shot street kids on the street corner on my vacation.

A consumer capitalist culture enjoys the most positive outcomes. But once you start LEGISLATING a culture of workers by denying them recreational drugs, you no longer have capitalism. You only have a ghost of capitalism underneath the shadow of statist policies.

I agree that abortion is murder. I am curious, though...how do you justify calling it murder? I already know what I think about it, but I would enjoy getting a different perspective.

The outcome of consumer capitalism has been pollution and global warming. We got some luxuries like the internet thanks to the military. Other luxuries, like computers, also thanks to the military. One could argue computers are a necessity more than a convenience at this point, since without computers half the population would probably die, and also it would be much more difficult to keep track of global warming or making the necessary technologies to reverse global warming. America was doing just fine before consumer capitalism. The problem with consumer capitalism is that it requires growth and constant consumption. Economic growth, moreso than actual technological evolution. This means constant population growth is required, more global warming, while technological innovation might actually get stimied due to intentional planned obsolescence and other phenomenon exclusive to consumerism.



It is taking a human life. If there is no CNS then it is not murder. Taking animal lives is murder also except when out of necessity.

Then it's capitalism that fails to be ruled by reason. Capitalists are only reasonably obligated to do what benefits them individually; however, rational self interest dictates that the needs of others in cooperatively seeking a better quality of life results in the best life for ALL--producers and consumers alike. Global warming as presented by collectivists and statists is a hoax. It stands to reason that producers concerned with their own rational self-interest would take an interest in the environment. More consumers=greater demand. Out-of-control climate caused by human impact means fewer consumers, less demand, lower or no profits. No profit means neither producers nor consumers can enjoy a sustained quality of life.

Given current data and knowledge that global warming/cooling are cyclical trends, it is unreasonable to base too many decisions on the words of envious and greedy people. If environmentalists are sincere about their beliefs in the coming global climate cataclysm, they have a suspiciously high amount of skin in the game.


On this we...MOSTLY agree! I take a harder line when it comes to HUMAN life. I tend to look at abortion as evil (murder) because it means the denial of human life and freedom. Denying a mother the right to an abortion is reasonable because carrying a baby to term does not inherently impact a woman's rights in the long term. At worst, it's an inconvenience. But it is nonetheless perfectly natural and expected. I would not make the same argument for, say, obligating people to blood/tissue transfusions.

Any time ANYONE threatens the life of ANYONE, the individual has the right to defend her own life even at the expense of the life of the one posing the threat. I believe there is a reasonable self-defense argument in favor of abortion. No mother is obligated to kill her baby any more than a homeowner is obligated to kill an armed robber. But I do believe under extremely rare and unique circumstances abortion is a reasonable option (ectopic pregnancies, cancer treatment, child victims of sexual assault who are at an unusually high risk, and ANY situation in which the death of the mother is imminent if she is to carry the baby to term).

The argument could be made that the earliest stages of conception and pregnancy that the baby does not have a CNS. Is that, in your view, a reasonable exception? In my view, it's not.

I also think murder is restricted to human beings. I like meat. I do think limiting the suffering of animals slaughtered for food is important.

America was founded as a communist dictatorship. It was the first communist country. All able bodied adult males were expected to be part of a militia and fight whatever battles the state demanded of them. Thankfully, society no longer has to follow such primitive expectations, (although actually that might be useful in California now to fend off Chinese land invasion.)

But now we have a new form of draconianism, the draconianism of consumer capatalism.

No it stands to reason that producers will do anything for short term gains, we've seen time and time again they have no heed for the effects for future generations.


That is pseudoscience and not accepted by even most fringe scientists. This has been debunked time and time again on numerous occasions.


"Environmentalists" are not a monolithic entity. Some of them have even made inane decisions such as trying to ban nuclear energy (nuclear energy might be one of the only ways to save the planet from global warming.)


No. Quality of life is determined by quality of goods and services, production is achieved by resource acquisition and monetary flow. Profit is not fundamentally required, only monetary flow. For instance everyone could have UBI in order to purchase goods and services, this would result in monetary flow.


No because if someone's angry sibling says "I'm gonna kill you" over you accidentally losing their favorite pair of shoes its probably just a figure of speech. Someone has to both have a threat and be a clear danger also. Otherwise we descend into woke European nanny state where there is no freedom of speech.

I thought the argument was there is no obligation to kill an unarmed robber. Chances are, if they are armed you are gonna have to kill them, unless you have a great hiding spot and/or they turned their back and you are able to get the drop on them and they surrender, because when you said "freeze" you got lucky and they didn't just turn around and shoot you. And if there are two of them you are definitely probably going to have to kill one of them (or heroically pistol whip K.O. the one that surrendered), because if you point your gun on one of them chances are the other one will just attack you, and the chances are that you have enough time to handcuff the surrendered one (or even know how to safely handcuff them in the first place) is slim to none.

No CNS, no soul, its not murder.


No its still murder, if someone goes around shooting animals but the meat is wasted they are just a murderer. There are probably some exceptions though, like if a wild animal with rabies is attacking them or something.

No person has a legal obligation to defend themselves.