An unjust law is no law at all.

 

An unjust law is no law at all.
--
On Free Choice Of The Will, Book 1, § 5

 

Augustine of Hippo

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Just Cause: You are debauched and shameless.
Unjust Cause: You have spoken roses of me.
Just Cause: And a dirty lickspittle.
Unjust Cause: You crown me with lilies.
Just Cause: And a parricide.
Unjust Cause: You don't know that you are sprinkling me with gold.
Just Cause: Certainly not so formerly, but with lead.
Unjust Cause: But now this is an ornament to me.
(tr. Hickie 1853, vol. 1, Perseus - for comparison with tr. below)

 

Aristophanes

 

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

 

Martin Luther King

 

All interstate wars intensify aggression – maximize it … some wars are even more unjust than others. In other words, all government wars are unjust, although some governments have less unjust claims…

 

Murray Rothbard

 

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

 

C. S. Lewis

 

Iraq is an unjust war. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

 

Jimmy Carter

 

May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper — The Revolution — four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

 

Susan B. Anthony