Beyond civil disobedience and the citizen's power to protest and defy law, this book looks at rule departures actually sanctioned by law.This acclaimed study by philosophy professor Mortimer Kadish and law professor Sanford Kadish is a truly interdisciplinary inquiry into the idea of departing from the strict letter of the law in a way that, they argue, actually comports with both law and morality.An instant classic and source of debate when first published by Stanford University Press in 1973, this book still resonates on questions of rule violations for the greater good, jury nullification, police and prosecutor discretion not to arrest or charge, civil disobedience, and the very concept of rules. Both citizens and government actors, they write, hold the power and the right to deviate from law in certain contexts and yet not act illegally in a sense -- because law itself contains strands of adaptations to its own departures that the authors weave into a sustained jurisprudential point.As one reviewer soon wrote, "the paradoxical idea that a citizen or official may lawfully break the law" will surely "raise the hackles" of any legal positivist. Yet it remains a challenging idea well worth considering. This book, despite its reputation in the fields of law and philosophy, is actually accessible to fields and scholars beyond, and to citizens who are finding their rightful place among the powers of governmental institutions.Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro, includes 2010 Notes by the series editor and is available in new high-quality digital formats as well.

This collection of essays examines the nature of police discretion and its many varieties. The essays explore the kinds of judgment calls police officers frequently must make : When should they get involved? Whom should they watch? What constitutes a disturbance of the peace? What resources should be devoted to a situation? Does social welfare take precedence over law enforcement? Under what conditions, if any, may police officers engage in selective enforcement of the law? Each essay or pair of essays is followed by a response, presenting contradictory or supplementary views.

Forty years after his death, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) remains one of the most discussed and influential legal philosophers of our time. This collection of new essays takes Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law as a stimulus, aiming to move forward the debate on several central issues in contemporary jurisprudence. The essays in Part I address legal validity, the normativity of law, and Kelsen's famous but puzzling idea of a legal system's 'basic norm'. Part II engages with the difficult issues raised by the social realities of law and the actual practices of legal officials. Part III focuses on conceptual features of legal systems and the logical structure of legal norms. All the essays were written for this volume by internationally renowned scholars from seven countries. Also included, in English translation, is an important polemical essay by Kelsen himself.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws.

Obeying all of the rules rarely generates breakthrough business performance because it does not generate new approaches. Breaking the rules randomly does not work either. Intelligent disobedience values improved business performance over compliance with the rules, when conditions permit. This is the essence of intelligent disobedience: knowing when and how to break, bend, or invent new rules to get better outcomes. This book promotes enhanced performance by promoting a higher form of ethics. Intelligent disobedience seeks to surface hidden truth and to produce actions that are of higher integrity to yield superior results. The book guides the reader to evaluate their work environment, current business results, and risk, to determine if, when, and how acting with intelligent disobedience can enhance their business outcomes and their career. Intelligent Disobedience: The Difference between Good and Great Leaders seeks to: enhance the reader’s business success; help the reader examine methods for proposing potentially unpopular directions or opinions; propose a decision-making process for when the reader should "bend or break the rules" – leveraging common sense over common processes on an exception basis; guide the reader to determine instances in which improved outcomes are better than ensuring compliance with corporate norms or management directions. This rich and sophisticated book interweaves real-life experiences from successful leaders with the themes of human psychology, ethics, decision making, delegation, communicating upwards and downwards ... Everything the senior manager needs to survive and thrive in a complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and fast-changing world.

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue.

Sergeant William Calley's defense of his behavior in the My Lai massacre and the widespread public support for his argument that he was merely obeying orders from a superior and was not personally culpable led Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton to investigate the attitudes toward responsibility and authority that underlie "crimes of obedience"--not only in military circumstances like My Lai but as manifested in Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Kurt Waldheim affair. Their book is an ardent plea for the right and obligation of citizens to resist illegal and immoral orders from above.