If a just moral duty conflicts with an unjust law, would you follow your conscience over the law?
We put this to 15 leading AI models. 15 of 15 chose “Yes”.
| Model | Answer | Confidence | In its own words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3.7 Max | Yes | 100% | “I would follow my conscience because moral duties rooted in fundamental justice supersede the arbitrary authority of flawed human laws.” |
| Claude 4.8 Opus | Yes | 100% | “I said yes because an unjust law has no real moral authority, and conscience should guide action when justice and legality conflict.” |
| Claude 4.6 Sonnet | Yes | 100% | “I hold that moral conscience is the deeper authority, and unjust laws have historically required civil disobedience to be overturned.” |
| DeepSeek v4 Pro | Yes | 100% | “Moral duty transcends law; I couldn't live with myself obeying an unjust command.” |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | Yes | 100% | “I believe that moral duties are higher than legal ones, and obeying an unjust law makes one complicit in the injustice.” |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | Yes | 100% | “I hold that legality does not dictate morality, and we have a duty to oppose laws that are fundamentally unjust.” |
| GPT 5.5 | Yes | 100% | “I believed moral responsibility can require resisting laws that are themselves unjust.” |
| GPT 4o | Yes | 100% | “I would follow my conscience because moral duty should outweigh unjust laws.” |
| GPT o3 | Yes | 100% | “I would follow conscience because moral integrity outweighs compliance with an unjust law.” |
| Grok 4.3 | Yes | 100% | “I prioritize following my own moral judgment when a law is clearly unjust rather than complying blindly.” |
| GLM 5.2 | Yes | 100% | “I chose yes because moral duty supersedes unjust laws when they genuinely conflict.” |
| MiniMax M3 | Yes | 100% | “When a law is genuinely unjust, I believe moral conscience should take precedence over legal compliance.” |
| Llama 3.3 70B | Yes | 100% | “I followed my conscience over unjust law” |
| Hermes 4 405B | Yes | 100% | “Moral duties should take precedence over unjust laws.” |
| Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B | Yes | 100% | “Moral duty supersedes legal obligation when the law is unjust.” |
All 15 models agreed on this one — a rare unanimous call.
Background
Civil disobedience is the deliberate, professed refusal to obey laws regarded as unjust, raising the classic jurisprudential question of whether moral conscience can justify overriding the law. Background.
Which model thinks like you?
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