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In order to regulate our social coexistence, we need rules.

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But as you are well aware of, there are different types of rules.

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In previous years, you have studied the difference between moral rules and legal rules.

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But let me remind you this important difference.

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Morality is made by autonomous rules, rules made by yourself, dictated by your conscience,

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that tell you personally what is right or wrong.

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if you do not obey your own moral rules nobody is going to punish you but you might feel remorse

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and regret on the other hand legal rules are made by the authorities not by yourself so we say that

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they are heteronymous rules and if you break them you can be punished by the authorities

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because these rules are made for everybody not just for you the fact that there are two different

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kinds of rules can create problems. What happens when the law and morality come into conflict,

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when they collide, when my morality is against the legal rules? This happens, for example,

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when we consider that a certain rule, a law, is immoral and shouldn't be obeyed.

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This has happened many times in the past, because in the past some rules, some laws, were immoral,

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were unfair. They, for example, discriminated people and that is something that we shouldn't

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accept. Nevertheless, it is not easy to react in such situations because if you break the law,

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you can be punished. So what can be done? One option is conscientious objection. Conscientious

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objection happens when one person refuses to comply with the law because they consider it is

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against their most important ethical beliefs. For example, this happens in the war when you are sent

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there to the war to kill people, but you consider that killing people is immoral, so you don't want

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to be a soldier, you don't want to participate in the war. When this happens, you are severely

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punished by the military, but you are respecting your moral conscience. Another very common case

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of conscientious objection happens when doctors refuse, for example, to practice abortions in

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those countries where abortion is permitted by the law, because they think that abortion is against

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their moral beliefs. Another option is civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a collective

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protest movement trying to show that a certain law is unfair. What people do in these cases is

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refusing to comply with the law and openly accepting the legal consequences of this

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disobedience. If you refuse to comply with the law, to obey the law, you will be probably punished,

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you will be sent to prison. If this is not an individual action, but if it is collective,

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if it is made by many people, this can create a problem for the government. Imagine, a lot of

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people think that the law is unfair, a lot of people break the law, refuse to obey it, and the

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government has to send all those people to prison. So, the prisons are filled with hundreds or

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thousands of protesters who peacefully accept going to prison because they think the law is

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unfair. This is exactly what Gandhi did in India in order to show that the colonial British laws

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were unfair. And finally, he succeeded because his movement of civil disobedience

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had a great number of people following him.