Should we abide by unjust laws?

[Taraz]

One of my old roommates was a pretty hardcore Christian. I had always thought that he didn't drink because he thought drinking was bad. When he turned 21 a few years ago he started drinking all of a sudden and I was real confused. From our conversations it had seemed like he was appalled that everyone was drinking in school and that it was immoral, so I naturally assumed he thought intoxicants were just bad.

Apparently he just thought underage drinking was wrong and that it was terrible to break the law. I had also noticed that he never sped on the freeway, but I just assumed he was a bad driver. I asked him about what he would do in the case that he was forbidden by law to talk to females or something equally ridiculous. I assumed he would see that just because something is made law doesn't mean that it is righteous. To my surprise he said that he would stop talking to girls, but that he would do all he could to change the law by working within our system.

I thought this was absurd, but then he made a semi-compelling point. Who gets to decide what laws are unjust? If someone feels like a law is wrong, should they just have the right to break it? Why is my moral code so superior to our legal system? I didn't really have any good response to that other than I guess I would be willing to take the punishment if I got caught. But that's not entirely true because I would feel jobbed if I actually incurred some kind of penalty for breaking a BS law.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for with this post, but does anyone have any better answer to his questions? I've never really encountered his viewpoint, so I didn't know how to deal with it.