Freedom Flyer 16

Your argument that an unjust law "should nonetheless be obeyed so long as it remains on the books" was ill-considered, contradictory and dangerous.

One principle underlying the "rule of law" is the doctrine of "isonomia," which states that "The law must bear equally on all, and not favor one citizen over another." Is it possible, even by the furthest stretch of the imagination, to say that Ontario's Sunday shopping laws adhere to this "rule of law"? Not by a long shot.

In a free country. law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence. A just law, (i.e., a law based on the "rule of law") is one which (a) recognizes and protects individual rights, (b) is consistent, (c) applies equally to all.

On all three counts, Ontario's Sunday shopping laws fail miserably. As they are not based on any fair or objective "rule of law," there is no moral obligation on the part of anyone to obey them, merely an artificial legal obligation to do so. Under such circumstances, I suggest it becomes each individual's civic responsibility to do everything in his or her power to resist such a law, even to the point of defiance if necessary.

However, you correctly assert that "in a democracy, non-violent civil disobedience can only be justified as a last resort when profound questions of moral principle are at stake." But considering this along with your own acknowledgment that Sunday shopping laws "offend so fundamental a principle as freedom of choice" (the very basis of morality!), how can you possibly justify advocating continued obedience to them?

What you're asking the public to do amounts to something even worse than blind obedience, which is characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, not of free democracies.

Ontario's Chief Justice William Howland has similarly argued that we should continue to obey Sunday shopping laws despite their "unpopularity." By correctly pointing out that the rule of law "is what separates us from what happen in South and Central America", he leads us to the false conclusion that continued obedience to bad laws will prevent, in his own words, "the kind of anarchy recently demonstrated elsewhere in the world." Nonsense. The very opposite is true.

But leave it to Ontario Premier David Peterson to offer the most shallow of all justifications for Sunday shopping laws. In response to the Gallup poll showing a majority of Ontarians favor Sunday shopping, Peterson replied, "I don't think you can govern on the basis of polls." Oh really? If so, on what basis does he govern? Whatever it is, it sure isn't the rule of law.