* Sometimes individuals must break the law for greater good. This is called civil disobedience, or civil resistance.
* Just because one is breaking the law for common good, civil servants can't and should not be expected to stop enforcing the law. If you allow that, it's the end of the rule of law based society. The whole idea of just society is that you restrict what individuals in the government can do.
If you decide that civil disobedience is the way and you break the law, you should not ask to be treated differently under the law. Political pardons exist for a reason.
(I'm not taking position on the legality of actions Assage took, or justification of his actions. I'm arguing general principle.)
Breaking a law you otherwise believe in, in the service of some broader goal, is called direct action, riot, or terrorism, depending on the severity of the law broken, and/or the sympathies of the person describing it.
> In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
You won't consciously break a law that you believe in. "otherwise believe" means that you don't believe in the law.
Except there weren't. The attachment of authoritarians to the rule of law is merely a posture. They set it aside whenever it suits them to. They could set it aside in this case.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/03/katharine-gun-...
In general, criminal law permits but does not mandate prosecution and every prosecution is a judgement about not only the law but policy priorities. This argument is almost completely vacuous where it concerns offenses primarily against the state (it has some weight in equal protection terms when there are victims besides the state and the issue is whether the state is discriminating among victims on improper grounds in the manner in which it chooses to prosecute or not prosecute offenses against them.)
A group of judges met behind closed doors to discuss the incident involving Judge Patricia Curtin and concluded that she "intended eventually to give it back."
This is apparently part of a much larger pattern of "unequal protection under the law" in Massachusetts:
It was an immoral act done as far as I can tell, for immoral purposes, which were successfully attained. That it was also illegal is why it can be punished rather than merely pointed to as the kind of thing that must be tolerated despite its immorality.
The argument has, however, been made that the law as it is prohibits some other acts that are not so immoral and it could not effectively address what Assange did without so doing, and so it should be narrowed (or treated as more narrow by the executive) so as to let Assange go free in order to not chill more legitimate acts. This is, IMO, a not entirely unreasonable argument that I can respect, though I am unconvinced by it as yet.
The immoral purpose of letting the people know of the crimes that the US army has committed?
1. Assange helped reveal severe wrongdoings by various governments.
2. Assange engaged in unprotected sexual activity with two women that violated the scope of their consent, because they only consented to protected sex, and also because one woman was asleep in one case. This would have also been illegal in the UK.
3. No prosecution would have been attempted if Assange has not already made political enemies.
4. Russia made hay while the sun was shining by using Assange as a conduit to publish dirt they wanted published.
5. Assange definitely and unambiguously broke UK law by fleeing to the Ecuadorean embassy.
6. The fact that the UK would not allow Assange to depart the Ecuadorian embassy was condemned by the UN as indefinite detention without trial.
7. The current condition of Assange is really suspicious and makes the UK look bad.
(Which of these are actually true is for someone more qualified than I am, but they are all compatible.)
