In Kant on Miracles, I wrote:
The advantage of the epistemic approach [to miracles] is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.
This assertion that (deterministic) laws cannot have exceptions drew heavy fire. 'Ockham' commenting at my old blog, wrote:
If a law couldn't be broken, why do we ever use the word 'broken' in the same vicinity as 'law'? Indeed, at this point I could use a 'contrast argument' which I know Bill hates. It only makes sense to talk about laws not being broken, if laws can be broken. Ergo, laws can be broken.
We do speak of breaking laws and of laws being broken. But this is almost always in the context of civil (legal) laws and moral laws. The latter are prescriptive and proscriptive: You shall do X and you shall refrain from doing Y. Laws of these forms are often broken. But when they are broken, this has no tendency to show that they are not valid or binding. Legally and morally, one must feed one's children; but it would be absurd to argue that since some parents do not feed their children that these laws do not hold.
But in the case of laws of nature, violations do show that they are not valid. A law of nature that could be violated would not be a law of naure. A legal or moral law that could not be violated, by contrast, would not be a legal or moral law. The latter are 'laws of freedom,' laws that legislate with respect to free beings. A necessary feature of them is that they allow the possibility of their own violation. By contrast, a necessary feature of laws of nature is that they be exceptionless.
The necessity that attaches to moral and legal laws is moral necessity or obligatoriness. Now the following is a consistent set: {It is obligatory that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs). By contrast, the necessity that attaches to laws of nature is nomic necessity. The following is an inconsistent set: {It is nomically necessary that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs.)
If we bear clearly in mind the distinction between laws of nature on the one hand, and legal/moral laws on the other, then we will not speak of the breaking of laws of nature.
With respect to Ockham's contrast argument, I concede that it is bound up with the very sense of 'legal/moral law' that it be possible for such laws to be broken. But a law of nature is not a law in this sense. Events in nature can neither abide by laws of nature nor break them. That one and the same word 'law' is used both for legal/moral imperatives and also for nature-descriptive declaratives is an interesting fact, but it looks to be a case of pure equivocation.