ABSTRACT
In the modern era, natural law thinking on slavery issue has been equally ambivalent. While the mainstream interpretation has been to accept the authority of the secular rulers, the justification of disobedience in the cause of racial equality was taken up enthusiastically by church leaders of civil disobedience movements in the 1950s-60s. The duty to obey is justified by the overall beneficial effects of universal obedience and the negative disastrous effects of general disobedience. One prominent strength of consequentialist arguments is that its response to the issue of obedience to law appears to be rooted in common sense. The central question in any discussion of civil disobedience concerns the point at which it becomes morally permissible - or even obligatory - to resist the authority of unjust laws or institutions. A provisional definition of civil disobedience is that it means 'deliberate principled lawbreaking'.
