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Milgram and Hart on Resisting Oppressive Regimes

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Conceptual Jurisprudence

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 137))

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Abstract

This paper examines “the Resistance argument,” one of HLA Hart’s arguments for legal positivism. For Hart, a positivist concept of law that separates law from morality compares favourably to non-positivist ones for it facilitates resistance against oppressive regimes. Since law is separable from morality, the argument goes, law loses part of its “aura of majesty” and thereby, the legality of a norm is not a conclusive reason for citizen obedience. Molina-Ochoa argues that the evidence provided from the Milgram Experiments about obedience to authority figures provides empirical support for Hart’s hypothesis. The author also suggests that these experiments provide elements to doubt of non-positivist concepts of law, particularly those in which law displays some form of moral correctness, such as the one advanced by Robert Alexy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hart (1994), p. 210. In Hart (1958, p. 620) claims that, “If with Utilitarians we speak plainly, we say that laws may be law but too evil to be obeyed. This is a moral condemnation which everyone can understand, and it makes an immediate and obvious claim to moral attention.”

  2. 2.

    Green (2003b).

  3. 3.

    Blass (2009).

  4. 4.

    The Milgram experiment is usually ranked in surveys as the most famous psychological experiment. See: Banyard, P., and Grayson, A., Introducing psychological research: seventy studies that shape psychology. London: Palgrave.

  5. 5.

    Takooshian, cited in Blass (2000, p. 10).

  6. 6.

    According to Ernst Sosa (2007, p. 99), Experimental Philosophy “puts in question what is or is not believed intuitively by people generally. And it challenges the truth of beliefs that are generally held, ones traditionally important in philosophy.”

  7. 7.

    Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007, p. 125).

  8. 8.

    Hart (1958, pp. 593–629).

  9. 9.

    Radbruch (2006, p. 6) claims that, “Positivism, with its principle that ‘a law is a law’, has in fact rendered the German legal profession defenceless against statutes that are arbitrary and criminal.”

  10. 10.

    Ibid, p. 618.

  11. 11.

    Ibid, p. 620.

  12. 12.

    For an analysis of the debate, see Lacey (2008, pp. 1059–1087).

  13. 13.

    The proliferation of books and articles about the authority of law are examples of this change in the zeitgeist of contemporary legal philosophy.

  14. 14.

    According to Jerome Bickenbach (1985, p. 81), “If the legal institutions and those involved with them are merely fallible and not corrupt, the citizen aware of the constitutional framework of her legal system would surely not be justified in saying […] ‘This is law; but it is too iniquitous to be applied or obeyed.’ Rather, she should say, ‘This is a mistake; being iniquitous this putative law violates the constitution and is thus invalid.”

  15. 15.

    In the Postscript, Hart (1997, p. 250) claims “The rule of recognition may incorporate as criteria of legal validity conformity with moral principles or substantive values.”

  16. 16.

    Priel (2019, p. 268).

  17. 17.

    Green (2003b).

  18. 18.

    Hart (1994, pp. 185–186).

  19. 19.

    Hart’s version of legal positivism is probably the most influential on analytical jurisprudence. Dworkin (1977, p. 17), for instance, wrote that, “I want to examine the soundness of legal positivism, particularly in the powerful form that Professor H. L. A. Hart has given to it. I choose to focus on his position, not only because of its clarity and elegance, but because here, as almost everywhere else in legal philosophy, constructive thought must start with a consideration of his views.” In the same sense, Kent Greenwalt (1996, pp. 3–4) claims that, “H. L. A. Hart [is] the most influential modern positivist in the English-speaking world.”

  20. 20.

    Blass (2009).

  21. 21.

    According to ibid (p. 5), one fact that “led Milgram to his obedience research was his attempt to fathom the Holocaust.”

  22. 22.

    Milgram (1974, p. 1).

  23. 23.

    Ibid, pp. 145–146.

  24. 24.

    According to ibid, “The most far-reaching consequence of the agentic shift is that a man feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes.”

  25. 25.

    Haslam and Reicher (2012, p. 2). See also: Reicher et al. (2014, pp. 393–408).

  26. 26.

    These feelings of distress were replicated in a recent experiment similar to Milgram’s that used an avatar instead of a human being, and which measured the brain activity of the participants. See: Cheetham et al. (2009).

  27. 27.

    Burger (2009b).

  28. 28.

    Milgram (1974, p. 3, pp. 145–146).

  29. 29.

    As Leslie Green (2003a) suggests: “Many philosophers and social scientists agree that a social order is a legal system only if it has effective authority. An effective (or de facto) authority may not be justified, but it does stand in special relation to justified (de jure) authority. Justified authority is what effective authorities claim, or what they are generally recognized to have.”

  30. 30.

    Alexy (2004, pp. 35–36).

  31. 31.

    Perry (2013).

  32. 32.

    Burger (2009a, pp. 1–11).

  33. 33.

    Doliński et al. (2017, p. 932).

  34. 34.

    See Mixon (1976, pp. 89–104) and Mixon (1989).

  35. 35.

    For a similar argument, see Chapter Two of Hart (1994).

  36. 36.

    Doliński et al. (2017, p. 932).

  37. 37.

    In Col and in other writings, Hart denies Fuller’s thesis that the structure of legal systems had an inherent moral value. Hart suggests that systems of rules, such as the one imposed during Apartheid, had all the features of a modern legal system but were oppressive and immoral. See Fuller (1958, pp. 630–672); Hart (1965, pp. 1281–1296).

  38. 38.

    La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, No More Deaths, and The Abuse Documentation Working Group, Disappeared: How the US border enforcement agencies are fueling a missing persons crisis. http://www.thedisappearedreport.org/uploads/8/3/5/1/83515082/disappeared%2D%2Dintroduction.pdf, accessed January 8, 2021.

  39. 39.

    Fernandez, Manny, “A Path to America marked by more and more bodies,” New York Times, May 4, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/04/us/texas-border-migrants-dead-bodies.html, accessed January 8, 2021.

  40. 40.

    Zinn (2009, p. 420).

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  1. South Texas College, McAllen, TX, USA

    Andrés Molina-Ochoa

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora

  2. Hermann Kantorowicz-Institute of Fundamental Legal Research, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Gonzalo Villa Rosas

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Molina-Ochoa, A. (2021). Milgram and Hart on Resisting Oppressive Regimes. In: Fabra-Zamora, J.L., Villa Rosas, G. (eds) Conceptual Jurisprudence. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 137. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78803-2_10

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