Justice, being the governing and echoing voices of the law, enacts certain virtues. The law in its most ideal and democratic form, always serves justice but it is the implementation that leads to the injustice. The Socratic-Platonic view of the law becomes simplified and is personified in The Crito. Socrates has been dawned to his execution and is caught in between a moral dilemma. He has the choice of betraying the law and the state or betraying himself and what he stands for. Socrates in his old age has been subjected to the Law of Athens. He knows for a fact that the law is unjust in its doing; but, his main quarrel against Crito is that he cannot just escape and disobey the law. "What do you mean by trying to escape, but to destroy us, the laws are the whole state, so far as you are able?" The peculiarity about the excerpt dealing with law is that the law is personified to this humanly figure. They, being the laws, question Socrates in his own mind, asking, what exactly is he trying to do. .
The characterization of the law plays an important role in the text. Firstly, it is obvious to him that no one is above the law not even as much as to question it. Thus, he is obliged to stay subservient to the law, obeying what he preaches. This is what makes the essence of the law universal, that not even a man of question and wisdom can cajole his way out of "justice/injustice." Another part that he adheres to in his argument against Crito is the fact that Socrates himself cannot retaliate with injustice itself. He feels that injustice will be served upon the state and the law if he were to escape and act against his injustice, rendering his thoughts and teachings contradictory to his actions. Their attitude toward civil disobedience is on a negative note. They would in the most righteous of fashions reject civil disobedience. The Socratic-Platonic view of the law is to be civilly restraint to it.
