Is it ever right to break the law?

Let's make the question more specific, since I'm not asking about robbing banks or knocking

off jewelry stores.

Is it ever right to break the law on grounds that the law is unjust?

Well, whether right or not, civil disobedience of one sort or another has been a widespread

feature of the last two generations.

In 1963, activists led by Martin Luther King peacefully but systematically violated various

ordinances in Birmingham, Alabama, and other cities, which called for racial segregation in

public places. In 2010, at the G20, diplomatic conference in Toronto, Canada.

Some activists organized peaceful rallies, others rioted and practiced various other forms of violence, mostly against capitalism as an economic system.

In 2011, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, I'm sure you know about that,

living here in New York, took over a public park for some weeks to protest

economic inequality. In 2015, following the injury and death of a young man who had been

arrested, numerous protesters, some peaceful, some violent, took to the streets in Baltimore,

Maryland, alleging that blacks and whites were treated radically differently by police.

But civil disobedience of one sort or another is not just a feature of our time. It's taken place for centuries. Consider ancient

history. In about 1539 BC, Hebrew midwives disobeyed a direct command of the Hebrew king, the Pharaoh, to kill all

male Hebrew infants upon birth. In 539 BC, Daniel, a young Hebrew, who was a captive,

but he had been trained, educated, he was appointed as a Satrap, which was a kind of governor

under the Persian King Darius. He disobeyed a royal edict which had the effect of prohibiting him

from praying to God. He prayed anyway, and he prayed publicly. During the late 5th century

BC, the philosopher Socrates, it's a little unclear here.

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