<p>It is a common view that citizens’ relationship to the law of their political community is a matter of obedience—or disobedience: the law seeks our obedience, and a central question for political-legal philosophy is then whether we have a general obligation to obey the law. Such a view is particularly evident in relation to criminal law, which is often seen as consisting in prohibitions that citizens are required to obey. This paper argues that a polity that sought only obedience to its laws would foster a distinctive kind of vice in its citizens—the vice of servility (or the opposite vice of defiance). This suggestion will be explained and substantiated by paying particular attention to the criminal law, and by discussing three contrasts: between respect and servility; between abidance and obedience; and between responsibilization and infantilization. The argument is grounded in a (roughly) republican conception of a democratic polity in which citizens are agents, not merely subjects, of a law that is their law.</p>