The thesis studies certain forms of obedience and disobedience to the law. It looks at compliance that results from a belief in the law’s authority, then the behaviour or people who obey and disobey legal obligations for moral reasons and, finally, the phenomenon of civil disobedience. I examine these particular responses to the law because of the way in which they are normally understood. The leading theories of them are justified with reference to moral norms. I argue, however, that a philosopher can make sense of these practices without subjecting them to ‘moralistic’ analysis and suggest ‘pure’ alternatives to the dominant accounts. By doing so, I not only strive to improve comprehension of these instances of obedience and disobedience but also seek to demonstrate the superiority of the philosophical approach on which my alternative interpretations of them are based. My claims in this thesis, then, are both substantive and methodological: I describe various responses to the law as well as a means of understanding them.