What is Unjust Law?

A law can be passed by the right body, in the right form, following every correct procedure, and still be wrong. Apartheid-era racial statutes and colonial-era laws restricting Indian assembly were both, in that narrow sense, perfectly valid law. Calling a law 'unjust' is a claim about something beyond its validity — and this topic asks what exactly that claim consists of.

In two minutes

An unjust law is one that, whatever its formal legal validity, fails a moral standard — typically that it violates basic rights, treats people unequally without justification, or was made without any fair process — and the gap between legal validity and moral justice is the whole point of the concept.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – II: Foundations of Political Obligation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.