 One question that immediately arises from this conception of political obligation is whether “political” is the appropriate modifier. If the obligation in question is a duty to obey the law, then why not call it a legal obligation? The answer is that “legal obligation” has a different kind of work to do. For many legal philosophers, the claim that a person has a legal obligation to do X is merely a descriptive claim, a statement of social fact [see the entry on Legal Positivism]. The fact that a person has a legal obligation to do X provides him with a moral reason to do X only if he has a moral duty obey the law; that is, a political obligation. The value of this distinction is that it allows one to hold that a person may be subject to a legal obligation even though she has no political obligation to obey the laws of the regime in power. Suppose that the regime is tyrannical, inept, or simply so unjust that only a Hobbesian would maintain that those subject to its commands have a moral obligation to obey. Nevertheless, most theorists will agree that people in this unhappy country have legal obligations to pay taxes, refrain from certain types of conduct when driving, and do whatever the legal system that enjoys de facto jurisdiction over them requires; that is, claims to this effect are true descriptions of the world. But such descriptions are compatible with the belief that the people of unhappy countries have no moral duty to act as the law directs simply because the law so directs.