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In my book Against Obligation, I argue against political obligation, for permeable sovereignty and accommodation, and against interpretive obligation.1 In the first half of the book, I contend that even citizens in a liberal democracy do not have a general moral duty to obey the law.2 In other words, there is no good reason or set of reasons to obey all laws all of the time, even presumptively. Thus, I reject political obligation. At the same time, I argue for something I call permeable sovereignty, a type of pluralism.3 All of our sources of norms should be considered, at least at first blush, on par with each other and on par with the state's laws. I construct this argument from both my case against political obligation and a case for pluralism, although the latter is less well developed in the book. Since I also believe legitimacy and obligation are correlative, I argue that the state can seek to overcome its legitimacy problem by accommodating, whenever possible, our religious and other norms that conflict with the laws of the state.4
In the second half of the book, I reject what I call interpretive obligation in constitutional law. Constitutional interpreters, I contend, need not follow either prior or higher sources of purported interpretive authority, even presumptively.5 Thus, they need not follow original meaning, intent, precedent, or what the Supreme Court thinks the Constitution means now (with an exception for a duty to follow court orders, which is over-determined by arguments for both political and interpretive obligation).
Louis Michael Seidman has written a powerful new book, On Constitutional Disobedience.6 Seidman and I agree that present-day constitutional interpreters are not bound, even in a prima facie sense, to prior sources of constitutional meaning. We also agree that at any point in time, the Supreme Court is just one among many constitutional interpreters. Seidman briefly addresses, without resolving, the political obligation question.7 So where do we, or might we, differ?8 Perhaps it is on the question whether the Constitution itself obligates.
In Against Obligation I argue against the bindingness of ordinary law and of supposedly authoritative sources of constitutional meaning. I say briefly that those alive at the time of the framing were not bound by the new constitutional...