Given my specification that we have a moral duty to obey only the just laws of a legitimate regime, it is natural to explore what types of laws are in fact just. This matter is especially pressing for those who draw on samaritanism because a critic might worry that samaritan considerations are too restricted to justify most of the functions that modern bureaucratic states legitimately perform. In particular, samaritanism appears incapable of justifying all those functions that either require extremely costly sacrifices or do not rescue anyone from peril. To show how an advocate of samaritanism might respond to this challenge, this chapter focuses on two types of laws: those that require citizens to vote and those that draft citizens into compulsory military service. In the end, I conclude that an approach based on samaritanism has more resources to explain governmental functions than might initially be apparent, but that we should nonetheless be open to the possibility that many of the practices of existing states, even liberal democratic ones, are entirely unjustified.

Even if samaritan considerations cannot justify many of the functions that modern bureaucratic states regularly assign themselves, there are two reasons not to dismiss the approach on these grounds. First, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, there is no reason why defenders of the samaritan approach cannot appeal to other considerations that justify various additional obligations.