I have shown, in the previous chapter, that the duty to obey the law cannot be rejected outright as a moral impossibility. There is no contradiction between its acceptance and the independence of one's moral judgment and action. And yet, are there any moral grounds that justify this duty? Are there any moral reasons for adopting it? As I have already noted, the thought of the last two millennia has supplied this question with many affirmative answers, the success of which has been radically questioned by thinkers of the last two decades.

Two distinct types should be distinguished in the complex of reasons supporting the duty to obey, discussed in the course of the last two decades. The first includes reasons which arise only within the framework of democratic political systems. Reasons of the second type are not necessarily associated with such frameworks. For reasons that I shall explain at the beginning of the next chapter, I shall postpone my discussion of the first kind to that chapter. Here, I shall deal with the main general justifications for the duty to obey the law. There are six such justifications; the first is based on gratitude, another on consent, a third argument employs the possible negative consequences of disobedience, or in other words, the danger disobedience causes to the political system, another argument is based on fairness and the next on the duty to support just institutions.