Rather than confront his father, David turns his conscience against himself.
The majoritarian temptation has undermined constitutional protections for minorities of conscience against the systematic abuse of government power.
By making demands in return for the lives of the hostages they seize, they try to use their foe's conscience against him.
They both address issues of guilt and grief and responsibility; even more intriguingly, they set the individual conscience against the interfering machinations of state law.
No one is a saint, and most people calibrate their conscience against a level of minimum decency expected of people in their peer group or culture.
Mr. Bibb's account offered a rare glimpse at a prosecutor balancing the demands of conscience against his obligation to his office.
"I was prepared to deal with either outcome – on the one hand if a conscience vote was allowed I would vote with my conscience against homosexual marriage; on the other hand if a conscience vote was denied to me I would vote with my conscience against homosexual marriage and reluctantly accept the inevitable consequence of such defiance being expulsion from the party.
His defense of the private, individual conscience against the expediency of the majority found expression in his most famous essay, "Civil Disobedience," which was first published in May 1849 under the title "Resistance to Civil Government".
Ever since that vote, the fate of those four Republicans has been watched as a bellwether of sorts — a test of whether the Republican Party has room for politicians who vote their conscience against the party line.
Given Hare's track record, you might expect the play to be a passionate defence of Kyra's social conscience against Tom's arrogant disdain – and so, in some ways, it is.
It is meant to guarantee the right of individual conscience against compulsion, to protect the integrity of religion against the corrosion of secular support, and to preserve the unity of political society against the implied exclusion of the less favored and the antagonism of controversy over public support for religious causes.
