When he considers the question of whether one should ever break the law, he focuses on good laws rather than bad ones and asks whether it could ever be right to break a good law. Yes, says Aquinas, but only in the case of an emergency (Q95 a6 resp). His example is that though the gates of a city should not be opened during a siege, you might break this rule to let a group of the city’s defenders retreat back inside the walls. In less pressing circumstances one should seek to change the law instead of simply defying it. Furthermore, we should be reluctant to change laws, since that always comes
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