Vicious Law, Law-Abidance and the Virtue of Civic Practical Wisdom

The article contributes to the ongoing discourse on the general duty to obey the law by proposing a novel approach grounded in virtue ethics. The analysis begins by establishing the concept of the general duty to obey the law and the associated issues, namely civil disobedience and obedience to an unjust law. For this purpose, the article briefly examines Henry Thoreau’s work and considers the examples of a grudge-informer case and Adolf Eichmann’s trial. Subsequently, the discussion turns to the analysis of Aristotelian work on political philosophy and introduces the concept of a vicious law distinct from unjust law. These concepts invite consideration of law-abidance as a virtue. Several proposals of this virtue made so far in the literature on virtue jurisprudence are critically examined. This article argues for a new framework rooted in the virtue of practical wisdom, based on the Aretai Model. The emerging virtue of civic practical wisdom is a novel proposal in the discussion of law-abidance.