Practical Deference
I'm in Austin for the AGENT conference (Austin Graduate Ethics & Normativity Talks). I did the keynote address yesterday. Here is a summary of what I talked about.
1. Practical Deference as Solution to Disagreement
The Problem of Disagreement
In any human social group that is trying to cooperate for some common ends, it is almost inevitable that there will arise intractable disagreements about what course of action the group should follow. These disagreements may stop the group from undertaking any coordinated action, may induce group members to directly harm each other, and may waste resources. If there is no solution to the problem, it threatens to disrupt all social cooperation.
The Solution
Social groups have developed one extremely common type of solution. It is that the group members who disagree on the best course of action can nevertheless agree on a process for deciding on what to do. For this to work, three things are required:
It must be easier to agree on what is a fair process than it is to agree on what is the right course of action.
It must also be relatively easy to agree on what the process' actual outcome is in individual cases. E.g., people who don't agree on the right policy can usually still agree that taking a vote is a fair way of deciding, and can usually agree on what the actual outcome of the vote is.
Group members must be disposed to defer to the group's decision, once that process has been employed, even when they regard its outcome as the wrong decision. This deference includes obeying (not outright violating) the decision, as well as more broadly going along with the decision, which may require positively helping to implement it.
A Puzzle
There is a prima facie question about the last condition. How is it rational to defer to the decision that you, ex hypothesi, regard as wrong? We can suppose even that you know the decision to be wrong. Why isn't this an objectionable demand to sacrifice your autonomy and personal integrity?
Thesis
I argue that there are good moral reasons for such deference, in most typical private groups. But these reasons do not apply to the state or "society" as a whole, so there typically are no such good reasons to defer to the state.
2. Why Defer: The Private Case
In most normal cases, members of some private (non-government) group have some obligation to defer to the decisions of the group. There are several reasons for this:
There may be an obligation to show respect to other group members and their judgment.
Group members often have a sort of implicit contract with each other, which requires going along with the group decision. This implicit contract is accepted by voluntarily joining the group. Failure to go along with group decisions can thus be seen as breaking faith with one's fellow group members, and disappointing their justified expectations.
Going along with the group's decision helps to maintain the group's spirit of cooperation. Going against the group's decision risks causing other group members to similarly fail to go along with group decisions that they disagree with, and risks causing a breakdown of cooperation.
Example: A philosophy department is hiring a new professor. The department has voted to rank candidate A over candidate B, and thus to make an offer to A, and then, if A turns it down, to give the job to B next. The dept Chair, however, reasonably believes that B is better than A, and that B would definitely accept an offer. The Chair has to extend the offer to A. He could, however, sabotage the hire. He could, e.g., give a negative impression of the department to the candidate, in talking to A over the phone. He could forget to mention some of the advantages of his department, while being admirably forthright about its disadvantages. These things would make A likely to reject the offer, so the job will go to the better candidate, B. Is that what Chair should do?
Of course the answer is no. The Chair has to do his best to recruit A. Trying to sabotage A would (a) disrespect the other dept members, (b) violate the implicit job requirements that he accepted in becoming chair, and (c) risk damaging the cooperative culture of the department.
3. Why Defer: The Political Case
I think the above are good moral reasons for deferring in most typical private cases, where the group you belong to is a private group. You might think this could be extended to the political case, so that we would have obligations to go along with the rules that are made by your government (perhaps only if it is a democratic government).
This would be a stronger obligation than merely obeying the law. Going along with the law may require actively helping to implement it. E.g., if you're a government official, you might be tasked with arresting law-violators, prosecuting them, or punishing them. If you're on a jury, you might be asked to convict them. Refusing to do these things would not be actually breaking the law, but it would be refusing to go along with the law.
I claim that the reasons in section 2 fail to apply in the political case. As a result, I think you have no significant moral reason, in typical cases, to defer to the policies made by the state.
Here is how the state (typically) differs relevantly from most private organizations:
In the political case, you have about zero chance of changing the cooperative culture of your society. If, for example, you practice jury nullification, you really don't need to worry that future juries will retaliate against you by convicting some innocent people, or acquitting some people who deserve to be convicted.
Exception: if you are a high-ranking government official, then you may have a good chance of changing your nation's political culture.
In the political case, the state has already broken its implicit agreement with the people, many times. Here are some of the legal doctrines the state has adopted:
Sovereign immunity: No one can sue the government, unless the government agrees to be sued.
Judge/prosecutor immunity: No one can sue a judge or a prosecutor for anything that they do in carrying out their job. E.g., you can't sue a prosecutor even if he deliberately sends an innocent person to the electric chair.
Government agents have no duty to do anything for citizens. E.g., police have no duty to protect citizens; the Department of Social Services has no duty to protect children from abuse; etc. (See Warren v. District of Columbia, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, et al.)
The Constitution authorizes the federal government to do almost anything, because it authorizes Congress to "regulate commerce among the states" (article I, sec. 8), and this means the government can make any law that has an effect on interstate commerce. (See Wickard v. Filburn.)
My point about these examples is not simply that these are mistaken doctrines. My point is that these doctrines have no reasonable defense, are obviously in bad faith, and are obviously just invented to serve the state's own interests. Thus, even if you think there is a contract between the state and the people, you should think the state has broken the contract, and therefore, you may break the contract too.
The idea of an implicit contract with the state or with "society" is much less plausible than the idea that there is an implicit contract between a dept chair and the department, or between an individual member of some other voluntary organization and that group.
Background legitimacy: Most private organizations are basically legitimate & voluntary organizations. But the state is an organization originally created by violence and exploitation, and coercively imposed on people still.
Justice: Few of the mistakes made by private groups are actually major injustices. But nearly all mistakes made by the government are injustices, and many or most of them are major injustices.
To make a private case that was analogous to a typical political case, imagine again that you're in a philosophy department, and you disagree with the department's decision on some policy. This time, though, imagine that the department has voted to kidnap a student who has been complaining about her professors, and lock that student in the department basement for three years. Now do you have a moral obligation to go along with the departmental decision?
Competence: In typical cases, the original decision-makers (voters) are utterly incompetent, much worse than the decision-makers in a typical private group. Most voters in the U.S., for example, don't know the name of their Congressional representative. Most can't name the form of government they live under (given the choices "Direct democracy," "republic", "oligarchy", and "confederacy"). Most cannot name the three branches of their government. I mention these things because these seem like the most minimal things you could know about the government. And the decision-making process in which they engage commonly completely ignores obvious justice-based considerations. For instance, voters commonly completely ignore the question of whether drug prohibition violates the rights of drug users.
To make an analogous case with a private organization, return to the philosophy department choosing a new hire. Imagine that most of the department members don't even know the names of the candidates until they receive their ballots in the department meeting. While people are arguing about the candidates, most members are sitting there playing games or viewing cat pictures on their phones. Most of them don't even know that they're in a philosophy department; some think they're in an English department, or a History department, etc. And after ignoring the arguments, the members vote in an obviously unjust way -- e.g., they vote to give the job to Charles Manson, because the other candidate was black. In this case, do you have an obligation to respect that decision?
Conclusion
Even though we are often obligated to defer to misguided group decisions, in ordinary private contexts, we are not similarly obligated to defer to government-made laws in democratic (or other) societies.