Must We Obey Police? The Trouble With Grounding a Moral Obligation to Obey Police Directives

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate the justification of what I call policial obligation , a standing pro tanto moral obligation to obey police directives. I examine the philosophical importance of different theories of political obligation for the case of policing and argue that, in the United States, there are strong reasons to doubt that there is such an obligation.