Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Homero Aridjis: It might become necessary to break the law in order to defend a life, human values, nature and to ensure the safety of our planet Earth.

by Homero Aridjis

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Irina Yasina: It's a complicated question. I think, that in countries with dictatorships and where the law is not passed by the majority of voices and if not all representatives of the whole population could vote for it, such possibility exists. In the countries where laws are introduced in the democratic way, and therefore it is possible to say that interests of all groups are respected, such necessity should not arise at all. I do not exclude a possibility of breaking the law, if this law is stupid and serves only some special interests, and if it is created to oppress or to cheat people. Well, I’ll repeat myself, it happens at in dictatorships and there are some in the world.

by Irina Yasina

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jerry Mander: Answertext will be available soon.

by Jerry Mander

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jesper Green: It might become necessary to break the law when a situation allow governments, states or the most powerful society to exploit, kill or refuse other people in society or in the world. You could break oppressor’s law. I think there’s many ways you are allowed to break the law or when you are allowed to break the law. But that’s a perfect line between breaking the law and terrorism. The law is here to restrain us from doing stupid things. But if the stupid things are made by governments or brands or companies to gain more profit or more power, oppress people, then I think it’s all right to break the law. You can do it in an organized way, you can do it all by yourself but not to gain anything for yourself personally but for a greater purpose. Then it would be all right.

by Jesper Green

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jodie Evans: When laws are unjust. To expose the violence of laws. It's something we think about at Code Pink a lot because as a white woman in the United States, it's very easy for me to stand in the face of laws around getting our voices out about the war, but I can do that because I'm white and affluent. But other people in my country can't do it as easily because that opportunity to disrupt the violence of laws isn't as easy for them because they actually can end up in system and it can be quite violent. And the message wouldn't get out. But you know one of the most important things I think we need to do right now because as we lose of the rule of law, as we lose what even that means, laws have less and less meaning because they're violated every day and it's like who is at the effect of these laws are usually those who are the most powerless in positions where they undermine the power of the powerful. And so we need to continue to be in the face of the powerful by getting arrested, by showing the absurdity and stupidity of their laws and they're not obeying laws that were put in place to create a just society. The absolute disregard for law in the places of power and the place of people with a lot of money in corporations and our government is obscene. And using civil disobedience is a great way to expose that.

by Jodie Evans

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

John Gage: This answer is the answer to the previous question about how high is an element of a society believing in a fiction to some degree of how I truly belong and in reality discovering that I do not have the same level of belonging that as others do. It means the structure of law and allocation of resources is wrong. How do you judge whether a law is wrong? Well, you can judge from the position that there is an absolute law. I think in fact that’s a mistake. I think that every form of law is a contingent form, a contingent reaction to an immediate situation, a particular constellation of power, of distribution of resources. So, I think you each moment must analyze and reanalyze so carefully about how you benefit from a particular institutional arrangement of rule and law. Laws are formed to distribute resources, to distribute and allocate rights, to establish the position of those in a society in relationship to the others, but law brings with it something special, something not in the normal purview of an individual, that is a power of force from the state to enforce a particular distribution of resources or allocation of rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states clearly the levels of equality that should hold, but do not in every human community. So, in establishing the basis for your value in an existing system of law, if you are being treated equally, do not have access to the abilities to develop your resources in the ways that enable you to become a fully participant member of a society, then that momentary contingent legal structure should be changed. And often, the only mechanism for changing these sets of rules is to disobey them.

by John Gage

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jonathan Granoff: It's necessary to break the law when the law breaks the laws of fundamental justice, and - well I mean we're sitting in a square where the venture of Nazism took over this beautiful country of Germany, and distorted the laws of justice, in a most gross and horrific fashion. Imagine the courage of people that broke the laws of the state to honor the higher law of caring for human life. So, you know there are times in which the state which creates the laws that need to be broken can go so out of sync with basic principles of justice and righteousness that the law - that it's better to break the law than to go along with it. But I would add that it's very important that we not fight laws of injustice with violence; that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ and Socrates have shown us a higher law, a law of giving. That - that - I don't know if I could live up to that law - just seems so lofty. But at least we should set that as our compass point and strive for it. And strive at all - in all instances to bring the laws of the state into accord with that higher law. Would it be right to free slaves when slavery was legal? Would it be right to break the law of Nazi Germany if you were told to kill Jews? Would it - would that be - would it right to have broken the law in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge were running the country and killing their own population? Would it - would it be right to go along with those laws? Would it be right to go - was it right to go along with the laws of slavery? Was it right to go along with the laws of Nazi Germany? Was it right to go along with Pol Pot? Of course not.

by Jonathan Granoff

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jonathan Meese: It can always be necessary to break the law. But there are laws, which cannot be broken. This is something everyone has to decide for themselves. Only the psycho-radical form of life will survive. Whatever is going to happen. Laws break themselves and this is the best what can happen if you leave the breaking of the law to the laws themselves. Necessities will arrange themselves according to their determinedness. Then we can relax and let things happen. They are going to do it in a way they want to according to their own standards and someday there will be no law any longer. Only the law of art. Art is outlawed. Then we don't need to crow with our wishes for freedom, which will lead to nothing anyway. Instead we can leave freedom to freedom itself and we can be amazed like children that there are no laws any longer. Only the freak of nature but nature will overcome them. This is wonderful. Light is law, only light is law, only light. Refraction. The laws will focus in chambers, in halls. In halls with mirrors, where they reflect each other until they neutralize themselves. If humans interfere there will be laws for a longer time. Laws of miserableness. Laws of totality can only be broken by themselves and they only come into existence by themselves. They are independent from human beings.

by Jonathan Meese

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jonathan Stack: It's always constantly necessary to break the law. Law is oppressive to what your greater moral belief system once you are going to break the law. If you are breaking the law, there are laws that prohibit you from murdering another person. I don't think there is any reason for you to go out and murder another person. It prevents you from rape; there is no reason to ever go out and rape somebody, no matter what you feel or you think is done to you. On the other hand, sitting on the back of the bus like happened in Civil Rights Movement with Rosa Parks or Civil Disobedience as was inspired by the work and spirit of Martin Luther King, that's always -- that's something we should be breaking the law everyday, because everyday there are laws out there that are contributing -- that are against our well being. We don't sit there and work to break the law. We sit out there to -- we are not working on the negative. We are working on the positive. We are trying to find ways to transcend the limitations of law. And so, it's almost if you could make it your goal to wake up everyday to find news laws to be broken I think would be really positive. Just by definition, the law gets broken and that we need to break more laws, not less.

by Jonathan Stack

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

José Manuel Prieto: I think, that it is necessary to break the law, when it ceases to represent, when the law ceases to represent in situation that has changed, when the law ceases to be a reflection of a persistent situation. There are moments when the law should be broken to achieve a progress instead of stagnation. It is a situation which should be handled with much a lot of []. One shouldn’t shouldn’t always see oneself like [], I think. The laws have been established to be followed, but we shouldn’t feel as prisoners of laws that have ceased to work. [....] The laws [] are made [] to achieve a better living together of the people. That’s what I think about this question. Thank you.

by José Manuel Prieto

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Jwan M. Aziz: I think that the only case when it might become necessary to break the law is to save someone's life. i do not think there are other cases.

by Jwan M. Aziz

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Kailash Satyarthi: When the human sufferings go beyond limit, then the people don't care for law. If -- in many cases, I have seen in my own – own work that if the children are kidnapped or raped in front of their parents or vice versa, the parents are raped and molested or sometimes beaten up brutally by their employers as slave labors, then some people may break the law. So, when the human sufferings go beyond the control and beyond your tolerance, but that is normal human reaction. I am not justifying it. But, I am telling it that the people react in that manner which is violation of law. And, sometimes, the laws are violated, and we deliberately violate the laws which are really discriminatory laws because laws is not something which is divine, laws are normally created by the people in power and they always keep in mind that the vested interest of those power elite have to be protected properly while making the laws. So, sometimes, when you are raising the questions against atrocity of certain ethnical group or if their fundamental rights are violated and the state itself which is the responsible for the protection of law is responsible for the violation of the laws, then you have to oppose it. And, then, they make some laws that you cannot assemble at one place in a large number to voice against certain kind of operation and injustice. And, then, the civil society organizations and the people oppose and break those so-called laws which are not really not necessary because they are the laws meant for operation and to keep the people quiet and not to raise their voice. So, the laws which are against the human expression and democracy have to be opposed. And, if necessary, we violate it.

by Kailash Satyarthi

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Kamal Boullata: It is the people who dared to break unjust laws who expedited humanity’s progress. If a law may only serve those in power, but not those who are oppressed and crushed by power, the injured, the weak, and the victimized that is no law to obey. It is our moral obligation to break that law. In our Judeo-Christian tradition, we have had perhaps the first laws that came down to us or come to us from the Book of Exodus. We learn that Moses taught, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” Yet from my experience as a Palestinian, I can tell you that in Israel today, laws that govern the country’s non-Jewish natives are not those that are applied to Israeli Jews. Palestinian Christians and Muslim are prisoners today never cease to tell the world that they do not recognize the decisions of Israeli courts. If one would think of that a little bit further, one can see why some of these people feel it necessary to break Israeli laws.

by Kamal Boullata

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Kigge Hvid: So, actually I have a professor in law just beside me. So, my answer, and he would be very much better to answer that. I can take my sunglasses off. I think that it will be appropriate or necessary to break the law if the law contradicts with the feelings, the values, and the will of the majority of the people. That’s it. This is basically about democracy. If you live in a democracy, which you do, the laws are the rules that people in your world decided to live by. If you should come into a situation where the majority of the people in the states do not accept the laws, then it’s about democracy. Is it most people who believes in law find them good or not, if the majority hates law and kind of [inaudible] to them and they don’t represent their values, then it would be possible to break the law. Hey, Matt, one more thing. This doesn’t mean that you can’t speak up against the law, that you can protest against the law. But, it has to be as long as you live in a democracy and the laws are in agreement with the values of most people of the majority of the democracy, then the way you speak up against the law is nonviolent. Then you use your freedom of speech.

by Kigge Hvid

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Kurt Weidemann: Laws should be broken as little as possible and instead they should be abolished. The habit that everything should be regulated, as we in Germany are said to do and what we presumably really do, can't fix lives but makes them rather more difficult. And we should not continue to pass another law or to change them but ask ourselves: When is a law no longer necessary, when is it superfluous? How can we influence people in a way that it is not a law that prevents them from doing something or that puts them at a disadvantage or advantage but by giving them the possibility to develop in a human way and to act humanly towards other people. Self-determination which is a common word for us is fragile. It is too often regulated instead of saying: This person must think about it alone, they should try to find a solution together. And no government and no power should intervene.

by Kurt Weidemann

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Lesego Rampolokeng: It is wherever necessary to break the law actually. When the law is an animal that seeks to brutalize, to humiliate, to denigrate, to break down that which makes us human, there are laws that are placed a top us not to promote human understanding, to promote human commerce, none to make sure that human beings are able to harmonize the existences, but in order to be serving certain aspects, certain limited little corners of the human experience at the expense of others. Whenever that happens, then it becomes absolutely necessary to break the law. If the law is an ogre, if the law is a monster that is serving the people who made it in order to keep themselves on top of others, then it becomes a human responsibility, a human need to break that law. I believe anarchies are often called for in situations when so-called order leads to the destruction of human life. So, the need to break the laws is forever present with us. And, I will forever break it, when I think that by so doing, I will be setting in place a set of circumstances that elevates me to the space where I can think myself to be alive, where I can feel myself to be existing. I don’t think that the law is this holy, the sacred zone that serves to keep me human. Sometimes the law is in place simply to denigrate and dehumanize other people and that is when it is absolutely necessary to break it.

by Lesego Rampolokeng

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Leung Ping-Kwan: Answertext will be available soon.

by Leung Ping-Kwan

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Lijun Fang: As the law means a harmful power with use of force, it would be better not to break the law for an individual, as long as there is any chance not to. It is the same wherever it is in China, in Iran, in North Korea, in American or in Germany. This question is similar to ask when we, as a fly or any insect, should hit a train running in high speed.

by Lijun Fang

Sep 9, 2006 11:55:00 AM cite

Lillian Holt: I think that when it's an unjust law and how it affects one. I mean when you think about like Nelson Mandela. He broke the law so called because he "defied the laws of apartheid," which were about dehumanizing black Africans and to be [sure dehumanizing] but that mandated at the time. And I think somebody like Mandela had great courage and it takes great spiritual courage [inaudible] instead of saying this is unnecessarily and unjust. You are dehumanizing us in the process. Do not dehumanize yourself. So I'm going to break this and I will try to intervene with whatever means it takes, revolution. I am prepared to be seen as unpatriotic. I will do whatever I need to do to break this injustice and to bring justice and that's a powerful example, a powerful recent example, of when it is necessary to break the law, when the law only benefits one part of society.

by Lillian Holt