"When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it"
About this Quote
Kevorkian’s injunction challenges the reflex to equate what is legal with what is right. Conscience, he argues, must remain the ultimate tribunal when law enshrines harm or denies dignity. History offers grim confirmation: statutes once defended slavery and segregation, outlawed aid to persecuted people, and punished those who asserted basic rights. The lesson is not that law is worthless, but that legality is an imperfect and sometimes dangerous proxy for justice.
The words come from a man who made his life a test case. In the 1990s, Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan pathologist, assisted terminally ill patients who sought to end unbearable suffering. Most states prohibited physician involvement in assisted dying; Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was the rare exception. Kevorkian provoked legal authorities deliberately, even broadcasting a lethal injection on national television to force a public reckoning. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and served years in prison. To him, prolonging torment under the banner of law violated a physician’s duty of compassion and a patient’s right to autonomy.
The appeal to conscience draws on a lineage of civil disobedience from Thoreau to King, and on the postwar repudiation of the “just following orders” defense. But it also carries serious demands. Conscience can be blinkered or self-serving; substituting private judgment for public law risks chaos or abuse. The ethical weight of defiance depends on rigorous self-scrutiny, empathy for those affected, a readiness to persuade rather than coerce, and a willingness to accept legal penalties to demonstrate sincerity and respect for the broader rule of law.
Kevorkian’s challenge is thus both radical and restrained. Obey the law when it embodies justice; resist it when it compels cruelty. And if resistance is required, do it openly, bear the costs, and aim to move the community toward a more humane legal order where conscience and statute no longer stand at odds.
The words come from a man who made his life a test case. In the 1990s, Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan pathologist, assisted terminally ill patients who sought to end unbearable suffering. Most states prohibited physician involvement in assisted dying; Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was the rare exception. Kevorkian provoked legal authorities deliberately, even broadcasting a lethal injection on national television to force a public reckoning. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and served years in prison. To him, prolonging torment under the banner of law violated a physician’s duty of compassion and a patient’s right to autonomy.
The appeal to conscience draws on a lineage of civil disobedience from Thoreau to King, and on the postwar repudiation of the “just following orders” defense. But it also carries serious demands. Conscience can be blinkered or self-serving; substituting private judgment for public law risks chaos or abuse. The ethical weight of defiance depends on rigorous self-scrutiny, empathy for those affected, a readiness to persuade rather than coerce, and a willingness to accept legal penalties to demonstrate sincerity and respect for the broader rule of law.
Kevorkian’s challenge is thus both radical and restrained. Obey the law when it embodies justice; resist it when it compels cruelty. And if resistance is required, do it openly, bear the costs, and aim to move the community toward a more humane legal order where conscience and statute no longer stand at odds.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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