QuestionsMust we always obey the law?Breaking the law when it makes me the agent of an injustice
Must we always obey the law?Conscience first

Breaking the law when it makes me the agent of an injustice

Civil disobedience

Henry David Thoreau 1817 · 1862American essayist and naturalist: he refuses to pay tax to a state that tolerates slavery and wages war, and writes that conscience comes before obedience.
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What it claims

If a law requires me to be the agent of injustice toward another, I must break it, openly, and accept punishment (prison).

Why

If the law requires me to be the agent of injustice toward another, obeying makes me complicit: so I must break it.

The same idea through history
Socrates399 BCSocrates refuses the Thirty's order to arrest Leon of Salamis (Apology 32c-d), then accepts the city's sentence. King cites him as a forerunner of civil disobedience.
Henry David Thoreau1849'Resistance to Civil Government': the version presented here. Thoreau spent a night in jail in 1846 for refusing to pay the poll tax, at a time when the state tolerated slavery and was waging war on Mexico.
Martin Luther King Jr.1963Letter from Birmingham Jail: King turns the individual gesture into a collective, public, nonviolent action, and adds that one must accept the penalty.
In short

"Breaking the law when it makes me the agent of an injustice" is an argument by Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau, 'Resistance to Civil Government' (Civil Disobedience), 1849, 1849) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: conscience first). Its claim: If a law requires me to be the agent of injustice toward another, I must break it, openly, and accept punishment (prison). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Thoreau, 'Resistance to Civil Government' (Civil Disobedience), 1849
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1846 Thoreau spends a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax, while his country tolerates slavery and wages war on Mexico. In his essay he explains the gesture. He does not say that laws should be ignored or that every government is bad. He says there is a precise moment when obedience becomes complicity: when the law requires me to be myself the agent of injustice. Then it must be broken, openly, and the price paid. The P1 to P4 → C form is our reconstruction.

P1It is better to cultivate respect for the right than respect for the law. The only obligation Thoreau claims a right to assume is to do at any time what he thinks right.
P2The majority has no title to decide right and wrong: if it rules, it is because it is the strongest. The citizen must not resign his conscience to the legislator, not for a moment, not in the least degree.
P3Respect for the law makes well-disposed men the agents of injustice: law never made anyone more just.
P4 · implicit premiseWaiting until the majority is persuaded before disobeying is not enough: as long as one waits, one remains the agent of the injustice. When the injustice only demands patience one may bear it; when it demands that I take part in it, one cannot.
Therefore if a law requires me to be the agent of injustice toward another, I must break it, openly, and accept punishment (prison).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where one must do what one thinks right, where the majority does not decide that, where obeying makes one complicit, and yet where one should not disobey: for instance because reform can be won by discussion, or because disobedience would do more harm. This is the limit that the Laws of the Crito, Rawls and Arendt each, in their own way, set against it.
The argument is valid. My only absolute duty is to do what I think right (P1), the majority does not decide that (P2), and obeying makes me complicit (P3). Hence, with P4, the duty to disobey when the law makes me take part in injustice. Its strength is to limit disobedience to a precise case, complicity, instead of condemning all law. Its weak point is P1: what 'I think right' has no authority for others, and anyone can believe the opposite.
Analogy. An employee is ordered by the company to sign invoices he knows are false. He can complain, wait for management to change, protest. But as long as he signs, he is the one committing fraud. Thoreau says: as soon as your own gesture is a cog in the injustice, stop it, even if it costs you your job.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

T
The Laws (Plato's character) 390 BC · attacks premise 1

In the Crito, Socrates, unjustly condemned, refuses to escape. The Laws tell him he had two choices: to convince the city it was wrong, or to do what it orders, and that he has done neither. Obey or persuade: no third way where each decides alone what is just.

a defender replies
see the argument
Martin Luther King defender of the argument · 1963
King holds that Socrates himself practised civil disobedience, and that academic freedom is a fruit of it. There is therefore, within the very tradition of Socrates, a way of disobeying that expresses the highest respect for law: by accepting the penalty.
The debate goes on (our summary) On a common reading, the Crito forbids escaping, not refusing an unjust order. Thoreau does not escape: he refuses to pay, and goes to prison. Both men therefore accept the penalty. What separates them is the starting idea: for the Laws, one has promised to obey or to convince; for Thoreau, the only obligation is to do what one thinks right (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)The Laws: obey or persuade. King: one may disobey the law, accepting the penalty, without disrespecting the law. The basic disagreement remains: who judges that a law is unjust, and does he judge alone?
Hannah Arendt 1970 · attacks premise 1

Arendt distinguishes the conscientious objector, who acts alone in the name of his inner voice, from the civil disobedient, who acts with others, in public, for a common cause. For her, Thoreau is a conscientious objector, not a civil disobedient. Conscience is unpolitical: it stays personal, cannot be generalised, and cares first about not taking part in wrong rather than about the world where the wrong is done. Civil disobedience is the action of an organised minority that dissents in public (our summary of her essay).

Thoreau replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1970, after the author's death (1862).
Thoreau 1849 · Thoreau, in advance
Thoreau already thinks of the collective effect of his gesture: if even one honest man withdrew from the partnership and let himself be jailed, it would abolish slavery in America. And he writes that what is once well done is done for ever, however small the beginning.
The debate goes on (our summary) Arendt writes more than a century later. This passage by Thoreau, written long before, half-answers her: his gesture is conceived as an example, not as a mere withdrawal of conscience. But he proposes neither organisation nor common action. It is King, a century later, who turns the individual gesture into a movement (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Arendt: conscience alone is not a political basis. Thoreau: a single exemplary gesture can draw others. The basic disagreement remains: must disobedience be an act of individual conscience or a collective, public action?
John Rawls 1971 · attacks premise 4

Rawls admits civil disobedience in a reasonably just society, but on strict conditions: the injustice must be serious and clear, ordinary legal appeals have been tried without success, the act is public and nonviolent and done in fidelity to the legal order, accepting the sanction. It is therefore not enough that a law is unjust in someone's eyes (our summary).

Thoreau replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1971, after the author's death (1862).
Thoreau 1849 · Thoreau, in advance: must we wait for the majority?
Thoreau asks the question that Rawls settles with the condition of prior appeals: faced with an unjust law, should one be content to obey it, work to change it while obeying until then, or transgress it at once? According to him, people think they must wait until they have persuaded the majority.
The debate goes on (our summary) Thoreau doubts that waiting is reasonable when the state tolerates slavery. Rawls answers with conditions: other means must have failed, and the injustice must be serious enough (our summary). The two agree on one point: one disobeys openly and accepts the penalty.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Thoreau: no need to wait for the majority when the injustice demands my participation. Rawls: disobeying is justified only after other recourse, before a serious and clear injustice. The basic disagreement remains: when does waiting become complicity?