Why Respect the Law?

Comply with the Law. Familiarise with it. Accept the findings of the Law. Understand what you can of Law likely to cross your life path.

But why respect the Law?

The Laws are the product of the minds of people, not an almighty God.

The Laws are made by elite individuals, Parliament, Courts, not the collective public.

Laws are not made democratically (Aristotle's version not "representational" democracy).

Laws are inconsistent across the world. In Russia it is against the law to be homosexual, but not in Australia. In some US States marijuana use and possession for personal use is legal but not in the UK.

Even within nation states the Law is still subject to interpretation of individual people.

Laws are so hard to understand the average citizen needs an expert to interpret them, a person trained for years in particular laws.

All this means that the Law is fallible and does not deserve that resepected status it holds among most.

The Law is the best thing we have for ensuring a society has rules controlling behaviour and some vague idea of a moral society.

Why respect only the best thing we currently have?

Yet in court there is no fallibility, no misinterpretation, no incorrect judgment.

Even with courts of appeal, the same respect is demanded of the Law.

It is reasonable to agree that any group of people need rules.

It is unreasonable to respect the Law.

But to praise it, to fight and die and harm for it, to use it as a moral compass, to hold it among other respected things like family, friendship and love and security, wisdom, talent, physical ability, resilience, science, spirituality, courage, sacrifice, altruism, is ridiculous and self-contradictory.

These things are not respected for their infallibility, but for their intrinsic value. These things are respected as the ends to most of our means in life.

The Law is respected for like a God, as an end for all means, for its perfection, its superiority, its heavenly power and authority above all else.

Why this mindless respect then?

The reason is fundamental. Humans have a fetish for objective truth.

Humans believe that above us all exists close but often unreachable truth, not man-made, but true in itself.

The Law is, to too many, such an entity living like a God in the heavens above us.

Like the Latin Bible, the Law is so high above the average person we need experts, interpreters, Lawyers, to study it, pass exams and explain and work it for us.

The Law is just a bunch of the latest temporary fickle rules of a particular society.

The Law changes, is often against the morality of contemporary society because it changes slower than our morality.

The Law is man-made, not carved on stone tablets by God sent down to us from the sky.

The Law should be obeyed. But the Law does not deserve our respect.