Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

After all this discussion, have we answered our original question: why should people obey law?

Beyond prudential calculation and coercion, do we have a moral duty to obey?

We have discussed law’s functions, the certainty it brings society, the direction of legal reform, and our ideal of fair and efficient law. None seems sufficient to establish a duty.

A critical listener will still ask: so what?

Law serves the public—so what? Why does that create my moral obligation? “It is for everyone’s good” invites doubt and rebuttal.

How many unreasonable authorities, from mothers to bosses, take away free will while saying it is for our own good? Is law the same?

Function and purpose may not resolve moral obligation. We must return to social-contract theory, which we passed over quickly.

Social-contract theory is remarkable: endlessly imitated, never surpassed—or endlessly criticized, never abandoned.

Whenever we ask where public power comes from and what makes it legitimate, we return to this theory more than two centuries old.

Across those centuries, generations have criticized it and generations have answered by elaborating it into many descendants.

It is one of political philosophy’s central ideas.

This is a law course, not a political-philosophy lecture. But when we discuss law’s origins and the moral duties it entails, the subjects are difficult to separate.

The phrase “social contract” itself carries the spirit of legality.

Today a contract is an everyday legal instrument. The theory explains public power not through divine right, ancestral rules, or a sage’s instruction, but through agreement.

In Locke’s account, equal individuals in a state of nature simply gather and make a contract.

Locke even says rule of law marks the birth of political society. Why?

We need to enter his theory.

Social-contract theory has a kind of wave-particle duality: two natures that give it an advantage in argument.

It is both explanatory and justificatory. What does that mean?

It tries to explain why our ancestors in the state of nature surrendered some freedom and rights, formed society, signed an agreement, and obeyed law.

It also defends that choice, telling us it was reasonable and that we should choose likewise.