absolute duty. The element of utility takes precedence so that some laws might be considered unjust because they would produce unhappiness rather than happiness. Some laws may be unjust, giving rise to the question of whether it is right to disobey it:
Some maintain that no law, however, bad, ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should only be shown in endeavoring to get it altered by competent authority. . . Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opinion that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be unjust but only inexpedient, while others would confine the license of disobedience to the case of unjust laws. . . (Mill 43).
Mill himself would propose limits for criminal law and also for the moral force of social disapproval. The general test of law is utilitarian, based on the standard of whether the law tends to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
Mill argues that right and wrong cannot be equated merely with whether or not something maximizes happiness and sees a number of potential sources for the punishment that accrues to the individual who transgresses certain laws, punishment from the law, from his fellow citizens, or from his conscience. For Mill, the individual also helps see that justice is done through the action of his or her conscience. Mill says that the individual is, after all, the person most interested in his or her own welfare. Mill admits that many people refuse to recognize the distinction between that part of a person's life that concerns only himself and that part which concerns society. They state that the conduct of one member of society clearly affects the conduct of others and that no one is entirely isolated. Mill agrees that the mischief a person does to himself can affect others, and he finds that it is right to bring to bear moral disapprobation, Whenever there is a defin...