The Struggle for Law
bility for this state of things falls not upon those who transgress the law, but on those who have not the courage to assert it. Do not accuse injustice of usurping the place of the law, but the law of permitting that usurpation. If I were called upon to pass judgment on the practical importance of the two principles: “Do no injustice,” and: “Suffer no injustice,” I would say that the first rule was: Suffer no injustice, and the second: Do none! If we take man as he actually is, there is no doubt that the certainty of meeting a firm and resolute resistance is far more powerful to prevent the commission of an injustice, than a simple prohibition which has, in fact, no greater practical force than a moral precept.
After all this, can I be charged with claiming too much when I say: The defense of one’s concrete legal rights, when these rights are attacked, is a duty of the individual whose rights have been invaded, not only to himself, but also to society? If what I have said be true, that in defending his legal right he, at the same time, defends the law, and in the
76
