This is a book about the central questions concerning the duty to obey the law: about the meaning of this duty; whether and where it should be acknowledged; and whether and when it should be disregarded. An extensive store of answers to these questions has been accumulating on the shelves of philosophy ever since the Socratic Apology and Crito. The war in Vietnam, the American missiles positioned on European ground and the opposition aroused by both, have caused many Anglo-American philosophers to air out these answers in the course of the last two decades. They have re-examined the basic theoretical questions pertaining to the meaning and justification of this duty, and offered significant innovations on the more practical applicational questions of the duty's limits and the desirable ways of disregarding it.

Several lineaments characterize the position dominant among contemporary philosophers on the question of the duty to obey. This position is one of philosophical anarchism. It amounts to a denial of the very existence of a duty to obey the state. However, those maintaining this position adopt a careful attitude towards political disobedience, and refrain from justifying overly frequent performance of such violations. Finally, their treatment of political disobedience draws upon a background of humanist–liberal morality, a morality widely accepted by Western society which can consequently be taken for granted. They believe it right to disobey the law sometimes for value-based reasons, but the values they accept as justifications for such disobedience are humanistic ones.