Jason Porter - Legal Crimes

For my research assignment, I have decided to explore civil disobedience. I will be going through several examples in which I believe breaking the law is justifiable. My examples will include stealing food and medicine to feed your children when you have no money, the underground railroad and how slaves were led to freedom even though it was considered breaking the law, the harboring of Jews during World War II, and justifiable murder. With regards to the justifiable murder, I am thinking about giving an assortment of examples, ranging from killing someone who raped/killed a family member, to  killing a person who is threatening the lives of many others, for instance a terrorist.  I plan on referencing the movie, “A Time to Kill”, “Inglorious Basterds”, and possibly a couple more. The reason that I want my topic to be civil disobedience is because I personally feel that there are instances in which breaking the law is justifiable and that I think that it should be considered if or when these people are arrested and taken to court for these “crimes”. Sometimes, I believe that the justice system fails us as people and that there should be certain circumstances in which the laws can be bent. In some cases, it simply is not fair that a person who only had good intentions would go to jail for doing something that he or she considered to be right or justified at the time. I plan on talking about how juries already have some of the power to take justifiability into account, however I think that a more solid law should be put into place, because sometimes, a jury may not be an accurate representation of a population and that a lot of times, a person’s fate can simply be left to chance. Some questions that I will be addressing are, when is breaking the law justifiable and when is breaking the law not justifiable.