In one of his middle-period dialogues, Gorgias, Socrates says this: ‘I, being but one man, dissent.’ The question of dissent is of fundamental importance to Plato’s legal theory. And this question likely receives its most rigorous treatment in the Gorgias, where the validity of the law-state is most fiercely contested. One of the dialogue’s speakers, Callicles, asserts that positive law is intrinsically decadent. Violence is the only instrument of real justice. The law-state’s suppression of violence is necessarily a perversion of justice. Socrates’ rebuttal of this thesis is exceedingly subtle—and has lost none of its trenchancy. In this chapter, I interpret Callicles’ attack on the law-state, and Socrates’ skilfull reply, as a sign that Plato is preparing to depict his ideal law-state in the Republic. In that middle-period dialogue, Plato conjures a city in which the operations of a law-state would finally coincide with the proportions of justice. But even that city’s law-code, he admits, would not be perfect.