"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt"
About this Quote
Stanton’s line is a warning shot aimed at the easiest kind of moral posturing: passing rules that flatter a legislature’s virtue while ignoring how people actually live. The phrasing is surgical. “Cannot” and “will not” cover both categories of failure: laws that are impossible to follow (because they demand what material conditions don’t allow), and laws that are technically possible but socially illegitimate (because they clash with widely held beliefs or basic incentives). Either way, the damage isn’t confined to the targeted behavior. It bleeds outward, until “all law” looks like a performance rather than a shared contract.
The subtext is as political as it is ethical. Stanton spent her life confronting a legal system that claimed neutrality while enforcing hierarchy: women denied the vote, property rights, and bodily autonomy through statutes written by men who assumed compliance was owed. In that context, “contempt” cuts two directions. It indicts lawmakers who confuse authority with legitimacy, and it also legitimizes civil disobedience when law drifts into coercion unmoored from consent.
There’s a pragmatic radicalism here. Stanton isn’t romanticizing lawbreaking; she’s defending law itself by insisting it must remain tethered to enforceability and public buy-in. When elites legislate against human nature or social reality, they don’t create order. They create a culture of selective obedience, where rules become weapons used against disfavored groups and ignored by everyone else. That’s not governance; it’s corrosion dressed up as virtue.
The subtext is as political as it is ethical. Stanton spent her life confronting a legal system that claimed neutrality while enforcing hierarchy: women denied the vote, property rights, and bodily autonomy through statutes written by men who assumed compliance was owed. In that context, “contempt” cuts two directions. It indicts lawmakers who confuse authority with legitimacy, and it also legitimizes civil disobedience when law drifts into coercion unmoored from consent.
There’s a pragmatic radicalism here. Stanton isn’t romanticizing lawbreaking; she’s defending law itself by insisting it must remain tethered to enforceability and public buy-in. When elites legislate against human nature or social reality, they don’t create order. They create a culture of selective obedience, where rules become weapons used against disfavored groups and ignored by everyone else. That’s not governance; it’s corrosion dressed up as virtue.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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