law unto oneself

Probably from Romans 2:14 in the King James Version of the Bible (see the quotation under sense 3 below), though the term has come to have the opposite meaning, as senses 1 and 2 indicate. Sense 3 is now largely limited to references to the Bible verse.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔː ˈʌntʊ ˌwʌnˈsɛlf/, /-ˈʌntuː-/, /-ˈʌntə-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔ ˈʌntə ˌwʌnˈsɛlf/, /-ˈʌntʊ-/
• Hyphenation: law un‧to one‧self

law unto oneself (countable and uncountable, plural laws unto themselves)

1. One who is free from the constraints of law or rules.
   • 1707, Edward Earl of Clarendon [i.e., Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon], quoting Charles I of England, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], volume I, part 2, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the Theater, →OCLC, book V, page 490:

     If you take away the Law, all things will fall into a Confuſion, every Man will become a law unto himſelf; which, in the depraved Condition of Human Nature, muſt needs produce many great Enormities.

   • 1910, Basil King, chapter VI, in The Wild Olive: A Novel, New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, part I (Ford), page 65:

     The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to be a law unto himself.

   • 1969, David Little, “The Old English Order and Its Anglican Defenders”, in Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, →ISBN; republished Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press, 1984, →ISBN, page 134:

     The king, of course, was regarded as the central focus of traditional English institutions. By no means should he rule arbitrarily, nor was he a law unto himself.

   • 1979 August 20, Bob Dylan, “Trouble in Mind”, in Gotta Serve Somebody, New York, N.Y.: Columbia Records, →OCLC, B-side; lyrics republished in Bob Dylan: The Lyrics 1961–2012, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, November 2016, →ISBN, page 419:

     Here comes Satan, prince of the power of the air / He's gonna make you a law unto yourself, gonna build a bird's nest in your hair / He's gonna deaden your conscience 'til you worship the work of your own hands / You'll be serving strangers in a strange, forsaken land

   • 2011, Evan Fox-Decent, “Administrative Law as Solicitude—Reasonable Decision-making”, in Sovereignty’s Promise: The State as Fiduciary (Oxford Constitutional Theory), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, section 8.3 (From Jurisdictional Review to Deference?), footnote 30, page 210:

     The idea that administrators exercise authority as ‘laws unto themselves’ is one that applies in the first instance to exercises of discretion rather than to interpretations of law.

2. One who flouts the law or conventional wisdom; one who ignores rules or logic to behave according to his or her own standards.
   • 1864 December, “City Cousins”, in J. Holmes Agnew, editor, The American Monthly Knickerbocker, Devoted to Literature, Art, Science, and Politics, volume LXIV, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Published at the office of the magazine, No. 37 Park Row, →OCLC, 8th chapter (The Gorilla’s Den), page 566, column 1:

     [T]he law was made to oppress the colored race, so I snapped my finger at the law, an' resolved to come up with it every time I got a chance. I would be a higher law unto myself; for if a white man, when he was wronged, was justified in rightin' himself, even to the takin' of life, I, bein' no whit inferior to my white compeer, would take the law into my own hands as he had into hisn.

   • 1879 January 6, Morrison Waite, Chief Justice, “Reynolds v. United States”, in United States Reports (98 U.S. 145)‎, volume 98, Washington, D.C.: Supreme Court of the United States, archived from the original on 28 January 2019, pages 166–167:

     Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.

   • 1916 August, Dorothy Rose, “Red Tabs”, in The Royal Magazine, volume XXXVI, number 214, London: C[yril] Arthur Pearson Ltd, […], →OCLC, page 325:

     "I've made up my mind. I'm going to do dairy work, and it's not a bit of good your trying to talk me out of it!" [...] Dilys had always been more or less a law unto herself.

   • 1925, Robert H. Bowen, “Further Notes on the Acrosome of Animal Sperm. The Homologies of Non-flagellate Sperms.”, in The Anatomical Record: An Official Publication of the American Association of Anatomists, volume 31, New York, N.Y.: Wiley-Liss, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 201–231; quoted in B. A. Afzelius, “Thoughts on Comparative Spermatology”, in Baccio Baccetti, editor, Comparative Spermatology: Proceedings of the International Symposium, Held in Rome and Siena, 1–5 June 1969, Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1970, →ISBN, page 565:

     The sperm never seems to transgress the few rules which govern the production of its fundamental parts, but in the arrangement of these parts every sperm (flagellate or non-flagellate) seems to be a law unto itself.

   • 2012, “Hagler” [pseudonym], chapter 36, in Tarnished Men, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 222:

     You were there? Again? You left the scene without reporting. You aren't a law unto yourself you know that right? I should arrest you on the spot right now.

   • 2015 April, Lisa McInerney, chapter 1, in The Glorious Heresies, London: John Murray, →ISBN:

     'You're sure your dad won't come home?' she said. 'He won't,' he said, though his father was a law unto himself and couldn't be trusted to follow reason.

3. (dated) One who is lawful in the absence of an enforced law; one who behaves with integrity.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Romans 2:14, column 2:

     For when the Gentiles which haue not the Law, doe by nature the things contained in the Law: theſe hauing not the Law, are a Law vnto themſelues.

   • 1850, Charles Ferme [i.e., Charles Ferm], Andrew Melville, translated by William Skae, edited by William Lindsay Alexander, A Logical Analysis of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, [...] Translated from the Latin […], Edinburgh: Printed [by Alexander Walker] for the Wodrow Society, →OCLC, page 27:

     The arguments by which he [Paul the Apostle] establishes his proposition are two. The first is:– / Those who are a law unto themselves are not without law: / The Gentiles are a law unto themselves: / Therefore they are not without law. / The assumption is thus proved:– / Those who, having not the written law, do by nature the things which are of the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: / But the Gentiles, having not the written law, do by nature the things which are of the law: / Wherefore they are a law unto themselves.

   • 1869, Mark Hopkins, “Is the Affirmation of Obligation Law?”, in The Law of Love and Love as a Law; or, Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner and Company, →OCLC, page 87:

     So is man, who is made in his image, a law unto himself; and it is because man is made in his image that God proposes to him the very same end as a ground of obligation which He himself recognizes.

   • 2008, Neil MacCormick, “Right and Wrong”, in Practical Reason in Law and Morality, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 67:

     I am ‘the law unto myself’ or (in contemporary idiom) ‘I am my own law’ to the extent that I judge my conduct in a principled way and seek to sustain some coherence in judgement and conduct over time, having regard both to precedent and to principle.

   • 2014, Alexander Somek, “Two Point Zero: Recognition”, in The Cosmopolitan Constitution (Oxford Constitutional Theory), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 129:

     It is possible, however, to perceive what underpins modern German constitutional law on the basis of a second understanding of self-determination. [...] According to this understanding one is self-determining if one is a law unto oneself. Being a law unto oneself requires being true to oneself. The "self-given" law is the law on the ground of which the self is what it is.

• scofflaw
• take the law into one's own hands