civil disobedience is not morally justified

That civil disobedience may be practiced only for the right reasons is first and fundamental among the regulating conditions King suggested. Civil disobedience is a morally justified act since it seeks to openly and non-violently address wrong and problematic phenomena in society. Anger at the brutality inflicted upon King and the southern protesters was, however, widespread among northern blacks. It is permissible, on those principles, only where necessary and, in a context of functioning constitutional, republican government, only in exceptional cases. A half-century after the Civil Rights movement, an upsurge in disobedient protest has moved some observers to proclaim a new era of civil disobedience in America, even as the boundary between civil and uncivil disobedience in this latest wave of protests appears increasingly permeable.[REF]. [REF] He contended that the social and economic rights he demanded are no less firmly rooted in Americas first principles than are the civil and political rights for which he campaigned in his movements first phase. To convey the proper respect for law, one must obey as much of the law as possible. Civil Disobedience. He attended a talk on Gandhis life and teaching and found the message so profound and electrifying that he immediately bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. The moral justification of civil disobedience is context sensitive; it should be restricted to a certain situation when there is a defect in the legal system, and the problem that could not be resolve through the legitimate way. Recent protesters have been generally heedless of the obligation to compose well-reasoned, empirically careful, rights-based arguments to support the justice of their cause, and their protests have consisted largely in efforts at disruption and coercion rather than persuasion. That is not to say that he fully met that responsibility, either in the Letter (which he continued to compose and revise after his release. At first glance, this suggests that either deontology or virtue ethics, or a combination of both, could be well-suited to form a theoretical basis on which Sioux tribes chose to peacefully oppose DAPL; however, the normative moral approach with the strongest claim to influence over the employment of civil disobedience, in this case, remains . Amid these conditions, a reconsideration of King could serve as a useful first stepdrawing our guidance from the. It is plainly at odds with his insistence on the correspondence of moral ends and moral means. " is the official definition from the Britannica Encyclopedia. They have the right, by his logic, to violate the rights of innocent parties (travelers, office workers, or public officials, along with their clients, patrons, and constituents). Like Gandhi, King believed that citizens have a duty to engage in . As King rightly understood, civil disobedience may only be undertaken: (1) for the right reasons; (2) in the right spirit; and (3) by the right people. To gain a full, sympathetic understanding of Kings position, it is necessary, as King scholar Jonathan Rieder has commented, to think concretely about the distinction: In Birmingham, the lawbreakers [castrated] a black man; they bomb[ed] ordinary families . Gandhi, a "central figure in the relationship of Congress and the Raj" was able to awaken Indians into political movements. Civil disobedience is justified for many reasons such as moral responsibility, legal attempts to change these unjust laws have failed, and it can be used to publicize an issue. The nations experience over the past half-century or so highlights the need for a careful reconsideration of the case for civil disobedience. Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason. Mindful of the dangers in an excessively permissive justification, he rejected the sort of disobedience that would lead to anarchy and explained his own practice in terms that indicate an earnest intention to negate or minimize any anarchic effects. Moreover, the most prominent eruptions in the past decade of what supporters persist in calling civil disobedience, including the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the anti-Trump Resistance,. As the Declaration makes clear, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution. Prudence, in other words, dictates a narrow-tailoring rule, according to which less radical alternative measures are to be preferred, explored, and exhausted prior to the adoption of more radical measures. Civil Disobedience Can Be Justified - DebateWise The conventional definition of civil disobedience leaves open some basic and challenging questions concerning its justifying causes and its permissible scope and objectives. Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. Executive Order 8802, issued in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under pressure from A. Philip Randolph, mandating antidiscrimination provisions in government defense contracts; Executive Order 9981, issued in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. armed services; the U.S. Congresss enactment of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960; and, above all, the U.S. Supreme Courts landmark, In Birmingham, the very citadel of southern segregation, the movement would either revitalize itself, King believed, or it would fail and all previous gains would come to naught. [REF] Finally, in his second-phase advocacy of intensified civil disobediencejustified, he claimed, by the force of the white backlash and the depth of white racism in Americawhat remained of the ethic of redemptive love that animated his first-phase argument? Bull Connor, the chief lawman, colluded with the Klan so they could carry out bloody mayhem on Freedom Riders. Given the context, it would seem a gross distortion of perspective to see in Kings and his fellow protesters actions a danger to law and order comparable to that posed by pro-segregation extremists. At the heart of the American character, evident since our nations birth, is a seeming paradox: Americans take pride in our self-image as a republic of laws and no less pride in our propensity toward righteous disobedience. [REF] For the same reason, they are to embody the greatest respect for man-made positive laws that circumstances permit. In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, King recalled the discoveries that would supply the moral power for the social revolution he envisioned. Civil disobedience | Definition, Examples, & Facts | Britannica The subsequent campaign in Selma, organized on the same principles and initiated by its own act of civil disobedience, generated a similar energy for the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In its most concrete manifestation, however, the precept of obeying law so far as possible appears in his insistence on submitting to the legally prescribed punishment for disobedience. In sum, at the present moment in American public life, the practice of purportedly civil disobedience is becoming increasingly normalized even as its proper basis, tactics, and objectives are subject to increasing confusion. Plato's topic on circumstances in morally permissible disobedience, I shall arguing, anticipates that approach. He added that federal courts have consistently affirmed his position that the threat of violence by othersthe so-called rioters vetoprovides no legally defensible ground for an abridgement of the right of peaceful protest.[REF]. 3. To What Extent is Civil Disobedience Justified in a Democracy Full article: Violence, communication, and civil disobedience In his first Massey Lecture, he declared: Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. Such a condition poses a clear danger to the rule of law. " Democracy. Peter C. Myers was the 20162017 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation, and is Professor of Political Science at the University of WisconsinEau Claire. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, feels obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. He lent his moral authority to a radicalized form of civil disobedience that was more likely to sow disrespect than respect for law and more likely to foster division than moral reconciliation. In his very first public speech (as a prizewinner in his high schools oratory contest), King protested that decades after Emancipation, Black America still lives in chains. For the remainder of his secondary and advanced education, he searched for the proper means, as he put it in that initial speech, to cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom., I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could nameif ten, During my student days at Morehouse, King wrote, I read Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience for the first time. They are to be conceived in the Declarations spirit of justice and consanguinity, and likewise in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln (We are not enemies, but friends. Note that in his call for a more mature form of civil disobedience, he emphasized the exercise of force aimed at interrupting societys functioning at some key point., Kings illustrations of the sort of actions he envisioned are useful in clarifying the distinction. In a democracy, minority groups have basic rights and alternatives to civil disobedience. These are untenable claims. Civil disobediencenecessarily involves violation of the law, and the law can make noprovision for its violation except to hold the offender liable forpunishment. Those evils did ensuebut as King emphasized, they came in the main from the actions of segregations defenders, not from its protesters. However, he was "interested primarily in social matters". Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. On what ground could he continue in his second-phase arguments to affirm the moral imperative of nonviolence, given his justification of coercion? The result of these shortcomings is that the argument of Kings Letter, while strong and clear enough to identify the injustice of racial segregation and disfranchisement, is also abstract and ambiguous enough to expose a broad range of positive laws to charges of injusticeand therefore, potentially, to acts of disobedient protest. PDF SAMPLE NEGATIVE CONSTRUCTIVE - National Speech and Debate Association He conceded that it was certainly a legitimate concern. If it conflicts with the higher law, it cannot be binding as law. The ontology of civil disobedience merely sets out that disobeying a law is potentially justified on extra-legal grounds. Is civil disobedience OK if it's the only way to prevent climate To reform the citysand the regions and the countryslaws, it was necessary to expose that conflict, and to expose that conflict it was necessary to demonstrate to a national public the effect of those laws in inflicting brutality and imprisonment on a class of decent and law-abiding people, who would demonstrate those qualities most visibly by their voluntary acceptance of the penalties for disobeying the citys law. In this way both the disobedience and the acceptance of the penalty are essential to Kings effort to reform the law by means of moral suasion. First was the famous essay by Thoreau, who therein declared: I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could nameif ten honest men only, ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. Something similar was true with respect to the indignations and provocations to which protestors would be subjected, which could be expected often to surpass the limits of the average persons patience. Civil Disobedience - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The practice of civil disobedience must preserve or enhance respect for law and therewith for constitutional republicanism. In 2008 Greenpeace activists unleashed a banner at a political meeting which said "Stelmach: the best Premier oil money can buy" during a speech by then . As for a corrective response, the optimal approach would ultimately involve looking beyond lately canonical discussions of civil disobedience and returning to the position grounded in Americas first principles. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. It is the non-violent, noncompliance with unjust laws that is ordered towards changing the laws. By adopting this controversial and problematic conception of rights, King effectively discarded his earlier regulating condition that civil disobedience may be undertaken only for the right reasons, clearly identifiable as such in the light of the natural law philosophy exemplified in the U.S. constitutional tradition. Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis--vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. Disobedience Breeds Disrespect Civil disobedience is an ad hoc device at best, and ad hoc measures in a law society are dangerous. situations in which civil disobedience would be justified; among his justifications is the need to preserve moral integrity, combat immorality, and promote positive social reform.1 Still many other philosophers, including Socrates, believed there could be no moral justification for civil disobedience. Its primary finding may be summarized in this lesson: Civil disobedience is justifiable but dangerous. Because they allow sentient animals to be tortured in factory farms, or. Civil disobedience is an important morally justified protest Beginning in the mid-20th century, however, a significant modification of the idea has gained legitimacy and prestige in this country and around the world, as many Americans and others have become persuaded that organized disobedience can be not only rightful and, in a higher sense, lawful, but also, Broadly defined, civil disobedience denotes a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies., In his major statement on civil disobedience, the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King wrote that the practitioner of civil disobedience does not disregard or undervalue the rule of law but, to the contrary, express[es] the highest respect for law., Americans simultaneous devotion to law and insistence on a right to disobey unjust laws signifies a fruitful tension in American principles, inherent in our foundational idea of the rule of law. a design to restore or to create a bond of community between the erstwhile victims and perpetrators of the injustice at issue. Civil disobedience is more than just "a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in law or policies of government.". However, from an outside perspective, the justifications are analyzed through the values of the individual, organization or government. Attempting to find virtue in the difference, King offered a troubling description of the prospective participants in his second-phase project, highlighting not their moral discipline but their social desperation: The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose.[REF], In a similar vein, King attempted to find even in the riots themselves support for his contention that the disaffected urban poor constituted a promising new class of potential pilgrims to nonviolence. Noting that the injunction method was proving an effective tool for segregationists in thwarting blacks rights to peaceful protest, King therefore decided to reject his fathers advice to submit to the courts ruling. s of forcing concessions from th. Civil Disobedience- an act against a certain law with no violence One thing that comes with civil disobedience is change. In the wake of SARS and H1N1, . A consideration of Americas first principles, as explicated in the political thought informing the American Founding, corroborates Kings view. AFF (Civil Disobedience is morally justified in a democracy) Value: Criteria: AFF CONSTRUCTION: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified because _____ a. Contention 1: Necessity i. The Right People. His disobedience shows a distrust for the democratic system. Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. One might also discern in Kings eagerness to deploy the language of revolution and natural rights in preference to that of constitutional law a certain zeal for revolution at odds with his insistence on respect for positive law. So there are three parts to my definition. Broadly defined, civil disobedience denotes a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies.[REF]The idea entered Americas public consciousness in 1849 via Henry David Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience, prompted by Thoreaus objections to the Mexican War as an instrument of the slaveholding interest. Finally, as for the principle that civil disobedience may be practiced only by people of properly formed character, Kings call for an expanded and disruptive campaign of civil disobedience did include a training period. The Limits and Dangers of Civil Disobedience: The Case of Martin Luther Fascinated by the idea of refusing to co-operate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. We should explore legal channels first. In sum, King argued, we had no alternative but to engage in street protests, andafter Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene Bull Connor obtained an anti-demonstration injunction from an Alabama courtno alternative but to engage in civil disobedience. Kings Defense: The Right Reasons. Two main considerations, however, convinced King of the immediate necessity of civil disobedience in the Birmingham campaign. Civil Disobedience, Punishment, and Injustice | SpringerLink We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. In the specific locale of Birmingham, anti-black segregation was enforced by the most brutally violent means. The disruption of traffic, infringing on a right of access to a public road, is in his view a permissible means of extracting a public concession to an aggrieved groups demands. Reasons. It is notable in this regard that the numerous authorities King cited in the Letter do not include Thoreau, whose highly individualist idea of conscience, disdain for majoritarian democracy, and pronounced antinomianism King did not share.[REF]. Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart. It was integral, in other words, to his larger design of exposing the stark conflict between local positive laws sustaining racial subordination and the moral laws of nature. His argument for civil disobedience in the later phase of his career diverges significantly from the relatively moderate argument he presented in his earlier, more successful phase. Civil disobedience and conscientious objection are social practices motivated by moral and political beliefs. That earlier argument, the argument presented in the Letter, conforms for the most part with the closely circumscribed idea of civil disobedience supported by the Founders understanding of natural rights and the rule of law. What sort of person, marked by what sorts of qualities, volunteers for such training in the first place? The action in Birmingham was Kings first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. Thus originated the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail., The objection was familiar to King. Civil disobedience in a democracy is not morally justified because it poses an unacceptable threat to the rule of law. 9. 10. He offered a second illustration in the form of a direct suggestion. It involves people coming together to stand against its government or any oppressor, to protest vocally and using all mediums available but without any physical force or violence. Why Civil Disobedience Is Morally Justified Essay Broadly defined, "civil disobedience" denotes "a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies."4 The. Again, the justification of civil disobedience in this kind of case depends on the particulars. But this is not all: many theorists argue that civil disobedience is compatible with the moral duty to obey. He believed that among the available channels for such demands, action via the court system was at best dilatory and often ineffectual; it needed reinforcement by direct-action, demonstrative protest. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. Such behavior would only hurt the system. When these attempts are turned back, civil disobedience then becomes a viable option. Justified or not, civil disobedience is liable to legal punishment. All will bear in mind this sacred principle, Thomas Jefferson noted, that the will of the majority to be rightful must be reasonable, and to be reasonable it must respect the equal rights of the minority. [REF], Even after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, King believed, America remained in a state of social emergency, a desperate and worsening situation even more serious than the country had faced in 1963. Readers receive only very limited guidance as to how they are to judge, amid a wide range of plausible interpretive possibilities, what sorts of laws work to uplift or to degrade human personality. Some go a step further and argue that regardless of whether civil disobedience is justified, it ought not to be punished merely because of its illegality, as there's a moral right to civil disobe-dience, either grounded on the right to conscience (Brownlee 2012; 2018) or the right to political participation (Lefkowitz 2007; 2018). Civil disobedience is justified if the laws enacted by the majority deny the liberty of others. Recent protesters have been generally heedless of the obligation to compose well-reasoned, empirically careful, rights-based arguments to support the justice of their cause, and their protests have consisted largely in efforts at disruption and coercion rather than persuasion. Is civil disobedience morally permissible? In a democracy, minority groups have basic rights and alternatives to civil disobedience. Q: Is civil disobedience ever justified? - ArcGIS StoryMaps The failure of federal authorities to adopt antipoverty measures on the scheduleand in the degree and kind he desirednecessitated, in Kings view, a new round of protests. Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful. Amid these conditions, a reconsideration of King could serve as a useful first stepdrawing our guidance from the best, not the whole, of Kings thinking regarding civil disobedience. Introduction: The Nature and Moral Justification of Civil Disobedience Its aim is to make that society more just, and justice is a stabilizing influence. That sort of care is especially needed at the present time. Visiting Scholar, 2016-17 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought. In his major statement on civil disobedience, the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King wrote that the practitioner of civil disobedience does not disregard or undervalue the rule of law but, to the contrary, express[es] the highest respect for law.[REF] The rule of law itself, in his reasoning, entails the legitimacy of civil disobedience. Lockdowns are unlawful, and are not justified Nonviolent protest so conceived may or may not involve actions in violation of positive law, but where such protest. Something similar was true with respect to the indignations and provocations to which protestors would be subjected, which could be expected often to surpass the limits of the average persons patience. A half-century after the Civil Rights movement, an upsurge in disobedient protest has moved some observers to proclaim a new era of civil disobedience in America, even as the boundary between civil and uncivil disobedience in this latest wave of protests appears increasingly permeable. In circumstances justifying greater forms of disobedience, it is reasonable to infer that lesser forms are permissible. In the "Resistance to civil government" essay, which was posthumously published as "Civil disobedience," Thoreau explains the need to choose one's moral sense over the conventional dictates of laws. One of the great glories of democracy, King remarked at the outset of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, is the right to protest for right.[REF] Americans in the exercise of that right gave birth to a new and singular republic, and the same right endures as an endowment by nature and a precious national heritage. Civil Disobedience: Are We Morally Obliged to Obey Unjust Laws? Such questions reflect more than merely theoretical concerns. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.[REF]. Drawing upon the higher-law tradition of American and western political thought, King argued that to qualify as law in the proper sense, a given statute or ordinance must conform with the principles of justice. King concluded: If one can find a core of nonviolence toward persons, even during the riots when emotions were exploding, it means that nonviolence should not be written off for the future as a force in Negro life.. The later model was altogether more problematic: less respectful of law, of the moral sentiments of the American public, and of democratic government, and less grounded in the American tradition of natural-rights liberalism. 6. Even during the civil rights movement, led by the nonviolent southern preacher, hundreds were injured and killed during these "nonviolent" protests. King departed from his previously held regulatory principles in another, related respect. Is civil disobedience wrong? When is civil disobedience appropriate? - sj-r.com As the Declaration makes clear, however, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution. As the Declaration makes clear, however, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution. Drawing upon the higher-law tradition of American and western political thought, King argued that to qualify as law in the proper sense, a given statute or ordinance must conform with the principles of justice.

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