 If the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it cannot rightly be complied with; one’s moral obligation is not to obey but to disobey: ST I-II q. 96 a. 4. And if it purports to authorize such acts (e.g. rape, theft, or infanticide), its authorization is morally void and of no effect (II-II q. 57 a. 2 ad 2); courts should not guide their adjudications by such laws (II-II q. 60 a. 5 ad 1). But law’s obligatoriness and authority is subject to further conditions, derived from the very nature and rationale of political authority. If the law-makers (i) are motivated not by concern for the community’s common good but by greed or vanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever the content of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authority granted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common good apportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and in the forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts of violence [magis sunt violentiae quam leges]: I-II q. 96 a. 4. Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one is neither morally obliged to conform nor morally obliged not to conform.