As we have already indicated, most people agree that we have a general moral obligation to obey the laws. There are, however, philosophers, the so-called philosophical anarchists, who question whether such an obligation even exists.

Autonomy

The best-known version of philosophical anarchism goes as follows. Our first and foremost moral obligation as a human being is to become autonomous. Autonomy is a refusal to be ruled, to have capacity for choice and for freedom - and to exercise this freedom. The obligation to act as an autonomous being undermines the possibility of acquiring any genuine political obligation. If we acknowledged authority, we would allow others to rule us and we would violate our fundamental obligation to act autonomously.

This is referred to as a priori anarchism. A priori anarchists are not saying that doing what the law requires you to do cannot be a good idea. They acknowledge, that you may have very good reasons to obey the laws. And some of those reasons may even be moral. For example, you may think that income redistribution in your state is sufficiently just and the right thing to do in this situation is to pay the amount the law requires you to pay. Or you may reckon that the redistribution is not sufficiently just, but on balance, the right thing to do is to pay - for if you are sent to jail for tax-evasion, your family might suffer. This is all fine according to the a priori philosophical anarchists. They believe that we should never obey the laws just because they are the laws. The law being the law does not give us an extra reason to obey it. But we ought to obey the laws when and if upon consideration we believe that it is the right thing to do.

Most philosophers do not take this theory to be especially appealing. It is not clear, for example, how could you make promises and contracts if autonomy were your first and foremost obligation. But should we really refrain from promising to show up at our workplaces every day at 9am, or to bring our kids, or to love someone till death do us part just because such an act would put a constraint on our autonomy?

Something is wrong with the question

Not all philosophical anarchists share the same opinion. Instead of committing themselves to an odd view on autonomy, a posteriori anarchists point out that so far nobody has managed to put forward a successful theory of political obligation. And if nobody has been smart enough in the last two and a half thousand years to answer the question, there is probably something wrong with the question. Consent theories cannot show that most of us consented to the laws. Gratitude, fairness and associative theories cannot provide us with strong enough obligations to serve as a basis for general obedience. Natural duty theories cannot bind citizens to their state. So a posteriori anarchists argue that there is a very good reason to think that most of us just do not have a general obligation to obey the laws, possibly with the exceptions of those naturalized citizens who took an oath of allegiance as part of the process of acquiring a new nationality.

Not surprisingly, it is not exactly difficult to justify whistleblowing from an anarchist point of view. You ought to do the right thing. These theories suggest that the law being the law does not necessarily give you an extra reason for generally obeying it. They acknowledge that in well-functioning democracies normally the right thing to do is to respect the laws - for all sorts of reasons. But at some point it is possible for the reasons for obeying the law to be outweighed by a sufficiently large public benefit that can be gained from breaking it.

Strengthen whistleblower protection

In this series, we have tried to offer you a handful of theories explaining why we ought to obey the law. We weren’t trying to persuade you to support any particular point of view. Perhaps we do not even agree amongst each other even here in the Liberties office on which of the theories is the most convincing. But we all agree that as citizens of democratic states we should care enough about these questions to discuss them. We should indeed think about our duties and rights, and form opinions on why should we do what we do.

We agree on something else at Liberties too. Whistleblower protection needs to be strengthened. Creating the right kind of law is a careful balance: it should not encourage people to break the law whenever they see something they don’t agree with. But it should protect those who act in the public interest by revealing information about significant wrongdoing, and had no other choice but to break the law to share that information.