Law: from Consent to Obedience (Study of the Relation of Consent, Obedience and Law in the Second treatise of John Locke on Government)

The present research has a main concern and it is to study the relation of consent and obedience from the viewpoint of the question of law. In a political theory like Locke’s, there is a fundamental complexity and that is believing in free equal men while justifying law as something which requires obedience. For Locke, law is the place of balance of consent and obedience. On this basis Locke tries to show that law is something of the kind of contract in which people consent to be subjects of a politico-legal order. According to Locke, human being is an entity which has self-governing in a fundamental way. In political society, this capacity appears in the Legislative and therefore it is the basis of political society. Hence Locke places the Legislative at the top of the political order. However, there are limits and conditions that shouldn’t be exceeded or violated by law and the Legislative. On the other side, although law should always be in the direction of public good, what makes law valid and legitimate is the bond of law and people’s consent. The lack of the bond abolishes the legality of law. There can be drawn no distinction between a law without consent and command of a bandit. So patriarchal expediency and discerning the good of the people are not sufficient grounds to justify law and political subjection.