SECTION 57-1-320 of the S.C. Code of Laws isn’t likely to be singled out for praise as a well-written statute. It declares that “no county within a Department of Transportation district shall have a resident commission member for more than one consecutive term.”

But neither is its meaning at all ambiguous — particularly when you look at the corresponding law for the old Highway Commission, which mandated not only that the seats be rotated among the counties, but also that commissioners be nominated by legislators from the host county.

Yet several legislators — apparently with straight faces — are claiming that the law allows a Transportation commissioner to serve two successive terms. And they’re not just claiming it: They’re acting on their claim, in direct violation of the state law that some of them were there to help write.

Earlier this year, legislators from the 1st Congressional District (which doubles as the first Transportation Department district) appointed House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s father, Robert Harrell Sr., to a second consecutive term on the board. This followed by two years the similarly illegal reappointments of Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman’s son-in-law, John Hardee, in the 2nd District and Moot Truluck in the 6th District.

Speaker Harrell told The Greenville News he doesn’t “know the law that well,” but said it was “pretty clear” that a commissioner can serve “one consecutive term, meaning one after the first one.” As Sen. Greg Ryberg told The Post and Courier: “Only when it comes to the South Carolina DOT commissioners does one equal two.... What part of ‘one’ don’t they understand?”

At least Mr. Harrell pretends he is obeying the law, however absurd that position may be. Sen. Jake Knotts’ response was to argue that the law didn’t make any sense: “When you get a good horse, you ride that horse. This crap about people believing in term limits, you get a term limit every time you get reappointed. If you aren’t doing your job, you don’t get reappointed.”

That might make sense — if you were arguing about what the law should be. But that’s not the question. As the attorney general’s office has opined at least six times since the Transportation Department was created in 1993, the law requires a district’s commissioner to be selected from a different county every four years.

That’s why legislators have introduced at least three bills since then to allow commissioners to serve “two consecutive terms” (which some, no doubt, would then claim meant 12 years). When those bills failed to pass, legislators in half the state decided to ignore the law.

That is outrageous. Few things public officials can do are worse than disobeying the laws they are sworn to uphold — particularly when they are the ones who write those laws.

The illegal appointments put the majority of legislators from the 1st, 2nd and 6th districts in the company of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who defied a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument he had installed in the state courthouse, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who issued “marriage licenses” to same-sex couples, despite a clear law that prohibited such unions.

As a judge noted when legislators tried to ignore the corresponding law that applied to the old Highway Department, legislators “are in a unique position” to change the law if they don’t like it. And unless or until they have the votes to do that, they need to obey it.