HSRP-660

1. Header

Number

HSRP-660

Category

Natural Law

Grade

ESTABLISHED

Status

ACTIVE

Entry form

Full

First entered

2026-10-18

Last revised

Not recorded

Register entry

https://worldfreedomcore.com/hsrp-research-notes#HSRP-660

2. The claim, in full

In natural law the subject owes obedience to laws that do not command wrong, and is bound to refuse a command to do manifest wrong

Cited on: /sovereign-citizens. Entered 2026-10-18 by the SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, tag NEW-SC47 (brief item AH47). THE PAGE'S OWN GRADE LINE READS: "ESTABLISHED as the classical doctrine; CONTESTED in modern legal theory". Burlamaqui II.iii.1 read on constitution.org (Nugent translation), which has two typographical errors in §XXVII ("farmer" for "former"; "induce us. even"); §XXVII is not quoted on the page. Cross-check §§XVIII and XXVIII against LONANG burl-2301.

3. What it rests on

• Pufendorf, II.12.8: "To the civil laws, in so far as they do not openly conflict with the divine law, the citizens owe obedience, not from mere dread of punishment, but from an intrinsic obligation, confirmed by the natural law itself" [SRC-212]

  Sources: SRC-212

• Pufendorf, II.12.9: "But a citizen cannot rightly commit in his own name a sin repugnant to the natural and divine law." [SRC-212]

  Sources: SRC-212

• Blackstone, 1 Comm. 43: "Nay, if any human law should allow or injoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine." [SRC-202]

  Sources: SRC-202

• Burlamaqui, II.iii.1 §XVIII: "the subjects are, by the laws of God, not only authorized, but even obliged to refuse obedience to all laws of this kind." and §XXVIII: "Thus a parliament, for instance, commanded by the prince to register an edict manifestly unjust, ought certainly to refuse it." [SRC-200]

  Sources: SRC-200

• Aquinas, I-II q.96 a.4: "laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, "we ought to obey God rather than man."" [SRC-835]

  Sources: SRC-835

No confidence intervals are recorded for any figure in this block.

4. Sources

• SRC-1276 · PRIORITY · Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 593 — Hart, H. L. A. (1958)
  Pinpoint: not recorded · Access: Access status not recorded
  Entered 2026-10-18 by the SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, from source entry S181. CITATION as the block gives it (S181): H. L. A. Hart, "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals," 71 Harv. L. Rev. 593, 620 (1958). URL (an NYU-hosted copy was read in the earlier breach research). SCOPE H-ONLY; PRIMARY. Only the words "too evil to be obeyed" are quoted. ELEMENT(S) OMITTED AS UNCONFIRMED (I08): to confirm.
• SRC-200 · PRIORITY · The Principles of Politic Law — Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1751/1752)
  Pinpoint: not recorded · Access: Access status not recorded
  PINPOINT VERIFIED AT SOURCE BY CONTENT 2026-09-22, from the Nugent translation, fifth edition corrected (Cambridge, Mass., 1807), vol. II, Part IV, sections XXIX-XXX. Quoted on /pv-remediation for the limit on the right of resistance: it belongs to "the greatest and most judicious part of the subjects of all orders in the kingdom" and not to "the vile populace or dregs of a country, nor the cabal of a small number of seditious persons"; and the tyranny "must be notorious, and accompanied with the highest evidence." (The OCR of this printing renders "notorious" as "uotorious"; the word is unambiguous in context.) PINPOINTS from /the-righteous-and-the-corrupt-sovereign: Part II ch. 6 §§XVI, XVII, XXI, XXIX, XXX, XXXV - the extreme abuse degenerating manifestly into tyranny and tending to the intire ruin of the subjects (XVI); moderate abuse attributed to human weakness rather than to an intention, and then "it is their duty to suffer something" (XVI, XVII); the design to destroy the liberty of his subjects appearing evident (XXI); the tyranny which "must be notorious, and accompanied with the highest evidence" (XXIX); actions manifestly tending to oppress, marching boldly on to the ruin of the state, and the subjects not obliged to wait till the prince has entirely rivetted their chains (XXX); the presumption in dubious cases in favour of the sovereign, and that in cases of manifest tyranny every one is in a condition to judge (XXXV). ALL TEN VERIFIED AT SOURCE BY CONTENT 2026-10-03. English text read in Thomas Nugent's translation, corrected 5th edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1807), as hosted by the LONANG Institute. These pinpoints are part, chapter and section numbers, not page numbers. The Korkman edition (SRC-201) was not opened. PINPOINTS from /evidence-of-the-breach: Part II ch. 6 §§XXI, XXIX, XXXV - the design to destroy the liberty of his subjects appearing evident (XXI); the tyranny which "must be notorious, and accompanied with the highest evidence" (XXIX); and "In dubious cases, the presumption ought ever to be in favor of the sovereign, and obedience is the duty of subjects" (XXXV). ALL VERIFIED AT SOURCE BY CONTENT 2026-10-03 in the Nugent translation, corrected 5th edition (1807), hosted by LONANG. Part, chapter and section numbers, not page numbers. ALSO CITED ON /your-duty from 2026-10-07 (Block 7, U47), for Part II ch. 6 sections XVI and XVII: the quotation there had stopped at a full stop that is not in the text, and now runs on to "rather than to an intention of subverting the liberty and happiness of the people." CORRECTION OF MY OWN NOTE, 2026-10-07: I recorded that /your-duty might have the two locators crossed. IT DOES NOT, and the author showed why. On that page the "§XXIX." at the head of the paragraph is the locator of the BLOCK QUOTATION ABOVE it ("the tyranny must be notorious, and accompanied with the highest evidence"), set after its quotation as the page does elsewhere; it is right, and this record agrees. The "In dubious cases" sentence simply had NO locator of its own. One was added, §XXXV, matching this record and /the-righteous-and-the-corrupt-sovereign. PINPOINT ADDED 2026-10-07, Part III ch. 1, §§XXVII to XXIX, READ AT SOURCE BY ME on that date: §XXVII, "The surest way then is to distinguish between a case, where the prince commands a thing evidently unjust, and where the matter is doubtful."; §XXVIII, a parliament "commanded by the prince to register an edict manifestly unjust, ought certainly to refuse it", and then "In those cases we should nobly exert our courage, and with all our might resist injustice, even at the peril of our lives."; §XXIX, "But, in cases where the matter is doubtful, the best resolution is certainly to obey." GRADE: VERIFIED for the two quoted sentences, ON ONE HOST ONLY. Read at https://constitution.org/2-Authors/burla/burla_2301.txt, which prints the corrected fifth edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1807) and runs from §I to §XXX with §XXXI absent, so the copy is not cut off. THE SECOND HOST THE AUTHOR USED REFUSES ME: lonang.com returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-07, as it has before. THIS SUPERSEDES THE "NOT FOUND" FINDING of the fix list of 29 September and the reason given for Block 2's exclusion X04: the sentence IS in the text, at Part III ch. 1 §XXVIII, and the three chapters searched earlier (II.i.7, II.ii.6, II.iii.3) were the wrong ones. SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, 2026-10-18: S07's Book II (Politic Law) pinpoints reach this record via the NUGENT 1807 COMBINED EDITION; Book I pinpoints go to SRC-199. The Korkman/Liberty Fund wording was not compared. PINPOINTS from this block: II.i.3 §§XVII, XXII, XXIII; II.i.4 §X; II.i.5 §§I, II, IV, VI, VII, XIII; II.i.6 §§VI, XIV; II.i.7 §§V, VIII, XXIV; II.ii.1 §§XIII, XXI; II.ii.5 §XII; II.ii.6 §§XXIX, XXXV; and from S07-AMEND, II.iii.1 §§XVIII and XXVIII read on constitution.org (Nugent translation), not compared with the 1807 print or LONANG. NOTE FOR THE REGISTER-WIDE REPAIR: this record's pre-existing edition mismatch (titled and dated as the 1751 Politic Law while carrying an 1807 combined-edition locator) is NOT fixed here, by the author's ruling. SOVEREIGN CITIZENS, EDIT PASS 2, 2026-10-18 (item C): five pinpoints added, all in Politic Law Part I, chapter 3, and ALL FIVE CHECKED WORD FOR WORD AGAINST THE 1807 NUGENT PRINT (archive.org, principlesofna02burl, read with pdftotext -layout). ZERO DIVERGENCES. PINPOINTS: I.iii.§X, the two acts in which civil government begins — "to unite together by means of a more particular society" and "to form this society under the dependance of a person, invested with an uncontrolable power, to the end, that he might maintain order and peace" (note the print's own spellings, "dependance" and "uncontrolable" with one l); I.iii.§XXII, what the institution of government costs — "man must renounce that power of disposing of his own person and actions, in a word, his independence"; I.iii.§XXIII, what replaces it — "Civil liberty is therefore, in the main, nothing more than natural liberty, divested of that part of it, which formed the independence of individuals, by the authority, which they have conferred on their sovereign"; I.iii.§XXIV, THE COUNTERWEIGHT, the two things reserved to the people — "the right of insisting, that their sovereign shall make good use of his authority, agreeably to the purposes, for which he was intrusted with it" and "the security, which prudence requires, that the subjects should reserve to themselves for the execution of their former right, a security absolutely necessary, and without which the people can never enjoy any solid liberty"; I.iii.§XXV, the full definition carrying both halves; I.iii.§XXIX, the retrospect — "When mankind renounced their independence and natural liberty, by giving masters to themselves, it was in order to be sheltered from the evils, with which they were afflicted, and in hopes, that, under the protection and care of their sovereign, they should meet with solid happiness". TWO OCR WARNINGS FROM THE ORDERING BLOCK, BOTH RESOLVED AGAINST THE PREMISE THAT THEY ARE LONANG'S: "sovereignity" at §XXI is in the 1807 print too — it occurs exactly once in the volume's 259 pages against 206 occurrences of "sovereignty", and that one occurrence is at §XXI, so the two texts agree there; and "Inasmuch" mid-sentence at §XIX is a capitalisation difference only, the print reading "but inasmuch as this liberty was made subject to reason". Neither word falls inside any quoted passage. NOTE ON THE SCAN: its own text layer is damaged elsewhere ("maimer" for manner, "wa6" for was, "remidied", "promots"), and "uncontrolable" straddles the p.18/19 page break as "un-" / "controlable", so a sequential probe for the whole word returns nothing on a page where it is present and exact. THE LOGGED EDITION MISMATCH ON THIS RECORD WAS NOT TOUCHED; it stays with the register-wide repair.
• SRC-202 · PRIORITY · Commentaries on the Laws of England (4 vols.) — Sir William Blackstone (1765-1769)
  Pinpoint: not recorded · Access: Access status not recorded
  PINPOINT from /the-righteous-and-the-corrupt-sovereign: Book I ch. 6, "protection and subjection are reciprocal". VERIFIED AT SOURCE BY CONTENT 2026-10-03 at the Avalon Project, which prints the long s as "f" ("fubjection"); modernized in the quotation on the page. SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, 2026-10-18: S10 cites this record. PINPOINTS: 1 Comm. 366 and 369 (Book I ch. 10, allegiance, natural-born subjects and local allegiance); and from S10-AMEND, 1 Comm. 41 and 42-43 (Introduction §2) - "Nay, if any human law should allow or injoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine." Read on the Avalon Project's transcription of the first edition, whose OCR prints the long s as f; quotations modernise the long s only. The p. 41 sentence was read in the earlier natural-law audit on LONANG and constitution.org and is to be checked on Avalon before it is relied on further. The UT Austin transcription is NOT used: it drops "or" ("allow enjoin").
• SRC-212 · PRIORITY · On the Duty of Man and Citizen — Samuel Pufendorf (1673)
  Pinpoint: not recorded · Access: Access status not recorded
  SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, 2026-10-18: S33 cites this record (Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen; SRC-213 is De Jure Naturae, a different work). PINPOINTS from this block, added by S33-AMEND: bk. II ch. 9 §4 and ch. 12 §§8-9, read on constitution.org - "To the civil laws, in so far as they do not openly conflict with the divine law, the citizens owe obedience". The constitution.org page prints "ifs" for "its" in II.9.4, outside the quoted words.
• SRC-835 · PRIORITY · Summa Theologica — Thomas Aquinas, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)
  Pinpoint: not recorded · Access: Access status not recorded
  Entered 2026-10-12 by the /the-hive-mind sources pass, from that page's SOURCES entry [95]. Convention: classical work. SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, 2026-10-18: S129 cites this record, which is THE EDITION S129 NAMES - the Fathers of the English Dominican Province translation, 2nd rev. ed. 1920, read on New Advent. PINPOINT: I-II q.96 a.4, "laws of this kind must nowise be observed". ANOTHER RECORD HOLDS THE WORK AT A DIFFERENT EDITION: SRC-217 (Summa Theologiae, 1265-1274, no translator named), whose own pinpoint range Ia-IIae Q.90-97 covers this question. The two were reviewed 2026-10-18 and are NOT a duplicate: this record names the English edition whose wording is quoted. Logged for the register-wide repair.

5. Counter-evidence

• Pufendorf, II.12.9: "Hence it follows that, if a citizen, by command of the ruler, bears arms, even in unjust war, he does not sin." [SRC-212]

  Sources: SRC-212

• Hart, 1958: the legal positivist reply that an iniquitous law is still law, though it may be "too evil to be obeyed" [SRC-1276] (at 620)

  Sources: SRC-1276

6. Why this grade

ESTABLISHED as the classical doctrine; CONTESTED in modern legal theory

The register defines ESTABLISHED as: Supported directly by primary texts or published findings.

7. Correction history

No correction events are recorded. The entry's status is ACTIVE: no later entry amends, supersedes or withdraws it.

Later entries that mention this observation: HSRP-634.

8. Related observations

No related observations are linked in the register.

9. Where this appears on the site

Content pages that cite this observation inline:

• Sovereign Citizens
  “In natural law the subject owes obedience to laws that do not command wrong, and is bound to refuse a command to do manifest wrong — ESTABLISHED as the classical doctrine; CONTESTED in modern legal theory”

Pages citing a source this observation rests on: /sovereign-citizens, /evidence-of-the-breach, /national-security-notice, /natural-law, /pv-remediation, /the-righteous-and-the-corrupt-sovereign, /your-duty, /legal-self-disclaimer, /the-hive-mind.

10. Open questions

Not yet recorded for this observation.

11. Machine block

The register record this page was generated from, with the derived fields added:

{
  "grade": "ESTABLISHED",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "category": "LAW",
  "title": "In natural law the subject owes obedience to laws that do not command wrong, and is bound to refuse a command to do manifest wrong",
  "entry_form": "full",
  "note": "Cited on: /sovereign-citizens. Entered 2026-10-18 by the SOVEREIGN CITIZENS block, tag NEW-SC47 (brief item AH47). THE PAGE'S OWN GRADE LINE READS: \"ESTABLISHED as the classical doctrine; CONTESTED in modern legal theory\". Burlamaqui II.iii.1 read on constitution.org (Nugent translation), which has two typographical errors in §XXVII (\"farmer\" for \"former\"; \"induce us. even\"); §XXVII is not quoted on the page. Cross-check §§XVIII and XXVIII against LONANG burl-2301.",
  "n": 660,
  "ref": "HSRP-660",
  "cited_by": [
    "SRC-1276",
    "SRC-200",
    "SRC-202",
    "SRC-212",
    "SRC-835"
  ],
  "related": [],
  "category_name": "Natural Law",
  "supplement": "029",
  "entered": "2026-10-18",
  "evidence": [
    {
      "statement": "Pufendorf, II.12.8: \"To the civil laws, in so far as they do not openly conflict with the divine law, the citizens owe obedience, not from mere dread of punishment, but from an intrinsic obligation, confirmed by the natural law itself\" [SRC-212]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-212"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Pufendorf, II.12.9: \"But a citizen cannot rightly commit in his own name a sin repugnant to the natural and divine law.\" [SRC-212]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-212"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Blackstone, 1 Comm. 43: \"Nay, if any human law should allow or injoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine.\" [SRC-202]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-202"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Burlamaqui, II.iii.1 §XVIII: \"the subjects are, by the laws of God, not only authorized, but even obliged to refuse obedience to all laws of this kind.\" and §XXVIII: \"Thus a parliament, for instance, commanded by the prince to register an edict manifestly unjust, ought certainly to refuse it.\" [SRC-200]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-200"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Aquinas, I-II q.96 a.4: \"laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, \"we ought to obey God rather than man.\"\" [SRC-835]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-835"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "grade_rationale": "ESTABLISHED as the classical doctrine; CONTESTED in modern legal theory",
  "counter_evidence": [
    {
      "statement": "Pufendorf, II.12.9: \"Hence it follows that, if a citizen, by command of the ruler, bears arms, even in unjust war, he does not sin.\" [SRC-212]",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-212"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Hart, 1958: the legal positivist reply that an iniquitous law is still law, though it may be \"too evil to be obeyed\" [SRC-1276] (at 620)",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-1276"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "appearances": [
    "/sovereign-citizens"
  ],
  "missing_fields": [
    "revised",
    "intervals",
    "pinpoint for SRC-1276",
    "pinpoint for SRC-200",
    "pinpoint for SRC-202",
    "pinpoint for SRC-212",
    "pinpoint for SRC-835",
    "history",
    "related",
    "open_questions"
  ]
}

Generated from hsrp-research-notes.json (register generated 2026-11-08). Nothing on this page is written by hand. 10 fields not yet recorded.