The key to the reason a civil disobedient should accept legal punishment for his action lies in the selectivity of civil disobedience and the hierarchy of orders of goods. Being selective, civil disobedience implies general acceptance of the political-legal system. A crucial element of a legal system, whether by definition or as a basic moral principle, is the rule of law. The rule of law is often equated with the principle of nulla poena sine lege, but a correlative principle is the equal application of the law—any violation of the law is a crime (illegal action). Unless all persons, whom it is reasonable to believe violated the law, are indicted, there is no sense to "the rule of law." Laws are special types of rules and to apply a rule is to judge all relevant cases in terms of it. Hence, equal enforcement of laws is essential to any morally justifiable political-legal system if not all such systems. It is a principle of at least the second order of goods. As a civil disobedient accepts the political-legal system he is committed to the equal enforcement of the law. Hence, he is committed to the application of legal punishment to himself if he is convicted of violating a law. For a civil disobedient to reject the moral justifiability of his being punished is to give up his claim to accept the political-legal system as generally justifiable; it is to renounce the selectivity of civil disobedience.
(Michael Bayles, "The Justifiability of Civil Disobedience," The Review of Metaphysics 24 [September 1970]: 3-20, at 19-20)
