"They’s lots a things ‘gainst the law that we can’t he’p doin’."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 30. Mrs. Wainwright suggests that the Joads take Rose of Sharon’s stillborn baby out and bury it. She makes the observation quoted after Pa Joad says that it’s against the law. But to starving migrants the law of survival is superior to the written laws of government. On a number of occasions people in the novel are compelled to break the law in order to survive.