Duty

• It is a judge's duty to guide courtroom activities.Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  A "duty" is an obligatory task that arises from a person's position in society, according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary. In his treatise "To the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics," the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant observes that duties require constraints on natural inclinations or impulses in order to attain certain ends. These constraints can be either external, as when a law compels or forbids an action, or internal, as when the person herself wills certain actions.
  
  

The Principle Duty

• The ability to defend itself must be a state's first priority.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  The first duty of all citizens must be directed toward preserving the state, imperfect as it might be, for all other ends depend on the just, peaceful order that only a state can ensure. Abraham Lincoln recognized this truth. While loathing slavery, he proclaimed in August 1862 that his paramount object in the war was, not either to save or to destroy slavery, but to save the Union, notes Carl Sandburg in his book "Abraham Lincoln."
  
  

Law-Based Duties

• If you earn income, says the law, you must pay taxes.Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images
  
  Preserving the state presumes respect for its laws. All citizens have a duty to pay their taxes, obey traffic signals and refrain from committing crimes. Those who drive motorized vehicles, purchase firearms, sell liquor or practice medicine have duties to obtain the appropriate licenses. Citizens who employ others have a duty to provide work conditions consistent with standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These duties exemplify duties implied by laws.
  
  

Extra-Legal Duties

• Indulging hedonistic impulses, the wealthy might neglect to help less fortunate citizens.Jupiterimages/Goodshoot/Getty Images
  
  Other duties reflect, not laws, but Kant's "internal constraints." For example, prosperous citizens may feel an obligation to help the poor. The wealthy, who have benefited disproportionately from the services and facilities government guarantees, have a duty to ensure that government invests in projects that lift the whole of society, according to E.J. Dionne, who writes in the online journal "Investor's Business Daily."
  
  

Civil Authorities

• Not all of a politician's duties are spelled out in law.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Duties unique to civil authorities reflect their roles in government. Many of those duties are spelled out in law. For instance, federal legislators, when regulating interstate commerce, have a duty to avoid favoring one state over another, according to section nine of Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Other duties reflect constraints not spelled out in law. The proposition that civil authorities should provide for the wellbeing of all their constituents, not merely those who voted for them, implies a duty to devise policies for the good of the whole community.
  
  

Civil Disobedience

• Stirred by conscience, a citizen inveighs against an unjust law.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Sometimes two duties clash, one reflecting the external constraint imposed by an unjust law, the other issuing from the internal constraint of conscience. In such circumstances, the nineteenth-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau felt a duty to disobey a state law in order to protest the institution of slavery, notes Wendy McElroy online at the Future of Freedom Foundation.