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]. Such exposure is a condition to be avoided at all costs; to escape or avoid it is the primary objective in the formation of political society.[REF]. Is civil disobedience wrong? Vanderbilt Law Review The discussion begins with a consideration of Americas founding principles, focusing in particular on the natural-rights principles summarized in the Declaration of Independence, and then moves to an extended analysis of the arguments of Martin Luther King, Jr. 8. I urge you to look at . When Civil Disobedience Is Justified - Conversation of Our Generation When the civil disobedient dis- obeys one law, he invariably subverts all law. 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. What be important for present purposes a that this ground is sufficient for justified civil disobedience. Civil disobedience, as defined by John Rawls, is a "public, nonviolent and conscientious act . Civil disobedience presents the ultimate respect for the existing order. It is a powerful means of combating unjust laws, and freeing society from oppressive restrictions. It is justifiable, in exceptional circumstances, by the first principles of free, constitutional government, but it is dangerous in that it poses a threat to the rule of law. So far as it is dissociated from the objective of full, fundamental regime change, it would become more widely available and appealing as a means of mere reform, and thus normalized, it would tend to act over time to corrode popular respect for the rule of law. The Problem of Civil Disobedience Subject: Politics & Government Study Level: College Words: 1375. 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.[REF]. He adopted an idea of rights grounded in indefinite human needs rather than in definite and distinctive human faculties, thus leaving rights claims with no clear foundation or limiting principle even as he endorsed a great expansion of those claims.[REF]. It had been raised not only by moderate southern whites such as the eight clergymen but also by defenders of segregation and by some conservative, moderate, and even liberal black supporters of the cause. The practice of civil disobedience required a special kind of personmeaning, in most cases, a specially trained kind of person. 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 civilit can effect a popular uprising against injustice even as it remains in conformity with the requirements of civility and social stability. It is used to prevent more chaos that is to come. Official websites use .gov A concern about injustice was a minimum condition, but King insisted that civil disobedience must be animated also by an ethic of love and service for other human beings, including perpetrators as well as primary victims of injustice. He was less successful, however, in clarifying the ideas of personhood and equality that were to supply the basis and the limiting principle for claims of rights and of rights violations. Kings later conception departs, too, from his earlier insistence that civil disobedience must be practiced in a spirit of respect for law, respect for democratic governance, and redemptive good will, manifesting a desire for reconciliation with ones erstwhile adversaries. [REF], The dangers were sufficiently great that the average person, naturally concerned for the preservation of life and limb, could not be presumed willing or able to brave them. 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 . 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]. 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. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation. Nor was there a legitimate opportunity for effecting change by the normal electoral process: Throughout Alabama all typesof devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters., 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. This means that the practitioner of civil disobedience must judge properly in identifying unjust laws as the justification for disobedience. Enthusiasts of civil disobedience proper should likewise recall the eruption of hundreds of urban riots in the years 19651968, almost immediately following the civil rights movements moment of greatest triumph. Yet, however glorious its historical associations and however appealing it may be on its face, the idea is complicated in its theoretical basis and problematic in its potential practical effects. This point concerning the regulation of civil disobedience by the dictates of prudence yields a vitally important corollary: Acts of civil disobedience are not necessarily revolutionary actions and do not necessarily rest on premises that justify revolutionary action. Therefore, a more appropriate definition is that civil disobedience is a public act that deliberately contravenes a law, that is publicly-performed, and that occurs in awareness that an arrest and a penalty are likely. We should explore legal channels first. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr.s Discovery of Civil Disobedience, From his adolescence to the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., found inspiration in the promise inherent in the Declaration of Independence, although he was acutely aware that for black Americans, that promise had gone unfulfilled. To its proponents, the idea of civil disobedience represents a compelling linkage of morality and efficacy, a happy marriage of moral ends to moral means in the pursuit of social or political reform. Martin Luther King, Jr. was deeply influenced by Gandhi in his use of non-violent protest. Civil Disobedience and Its Justification - LinkedIn Amid these conditions, a reconsideration of King could serve as a useful first stepdrawing our guidance from the. King held further acts of civil disobedience to be warranted because he regarded prevailing conditions of poverty and rising discontentment as effects of a set of terrible economic injustices no less grievous and even more widespread than the wrongs of the Jim Crow regime: In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income . An enactment to which lawmakers subjected only others, not themselves, would be no true law, and a similar disqualification would apply to any legislation imposed upon an unjustly disfranchised portion of the population.[REF]. Although the enlistees in that new army might receive training similar to what their first-phase predecessors received, the fact remains that the latter, drawn substantially from a population of southern churchgoers imbued with a Christian ethic of love and service, were beneficiaries of a moral heritage that many of those solicited for the later phase did not share. 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. At this point arises the issue of civil disobedience. Lockdowns are unlawful, and are not justified Describing his plan to recruit three thousand of the poorest citizens from various urban and rural areas to participate in a Poor Peoples March on Washington, he indicated that this nonviolent army, this freedom church of the poor, will work with us for three months to develop nonviolent action skills.[REF], Even so, Kings remarks relative to the character and motivations of this newly recruited army suggest that here, too, he departed significantly from his earlier account. The people in such circumstances hold rights to petition and protest, and should those appeals prove unavailing, to take action to effect such changes as are needed. Here, in fuller elaboration, is the logic informing the Declarations dictates of prudence with respect to actions leading up to and including revolutionary uprising. To provide against this danger, the Declaration appends to its announcement of the right to alter or abolish unjust government a crucial qualifying admonition: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.. Remember always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliationnot victory. Second, I attempt to identify a reliable . 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. A delegation of poor people can walk into a high officials office with a carefully, collectively prepared list of demands. How can civil disobedience be explained and justified so as to foreclose the possibility that it could implicitly license uncivil, non-rightful disobedience, or to ensure that even its legitimate usages will not prove corrosive of the rule of law? Two main considerations, however, convinced King of the immediate necessity of civil disobedience in the Birmingham campaign. When these attempts are turned back, civil disobedience then becomes a viable option. On a Moral Right to Civil Disobedience* | Ethics: Vol 117, No 2 To its proponents, led by King, the idea of civil disobedience represents a compelling linkage of morality and efficacy, a happy marriage of moral ends to moral means in the pursuit of social or political reform. "The refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition; its usual purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power. [REF] Such actions have become increasingly normalized in post-1960s America, as groups protesting a wide range of issuesincluding, in a partial list, nuclear armaments, abortion, environmental policy, and more recently, alleged misdeeds in the financial-services industry, immigration policy, and alleged police misconducthave laid claim to the method of civil disobedience. He is merely saying that since democracy does not work, why should he help make it work. First, the law has to be unjust and that has to be demonstrated. Civil Disobedience Can Be Justified - DebateWise This upsurge appears unlikely soon to abate. King held further acts of civil disobedience to be warranted because he regarded prevailing conditions of poverty and rising discontentment as effects of a set of terrible economic injustices no less grievous and even more widespread than the wrongs of the Jim Crow regime: In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income . Therefore I will keep the following ten commandments: 1. Lockes prudent admonition, the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people,[REF] applies equally well to the danger even the best protest leaders or movements pose to the rule of law. To convey the proper respect for law, one must obey as much of the law as possible. [REF], The action in Birmingham was Kings first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. Like slavery in this respect, segregation violates the moral law by relegating persons to the status of things.[REF] Such practices and the positive laws that support them do violence to the divine and natural order by denying to some classes of human beings the status of full moral humanity or personhood. Kings distinction between disobedience that is evasive or defiant and disobedience marked by acceptance of the authority of law is vividly meaningful in context. Aspects of civil disobedience. To hasten the achievement of his second-phase objectives, King renewed and intensified his call for civil disobedience. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, King reported, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform . The disorders that follow from ill-considered notions of civil or rightful disobedience are abundantly and frighteningly evident in the late 1960s and lately resurgent in lesser degrees. " is the official definition from the Britannica Encyclopedia. The difficulty in Kings position appears still more challenging in light of the impressive victories equal-rights activists had achieved over the previous two decades by a combination of political pressure and legal challenges. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, King reported, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform . 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.. In more recent times, the riots in Baltimore saw the death . One might further suggest that even in the first phase of his activism, Kings actions and his rhetoric did not fully accord with the strict criteria for civil disobedience that he adumbrated in the Letter. Critics have a point in charging that King bore a measure of responsibility for the eruptions of lawlessness that would begin to sweep U.S. cities from 19651968, even as the direct-action movement was achieving its greatest triumphs.[REF]. However, characteristics like conscientiousness are not necessary to the definition, and those like nonviolence are inappropriate. In addition to being nonviolent, it must proceed from a devotion to the ideal of moral community. The action in Birmingham was Kings first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. Like Gandhi, King believed that citizens have a duty to engage in . 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. The former described the practice of rabid segregationist[s], while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. His first illustration was offered as a hypothetical, though it has since become a common method in actual protests. Civil disobedience, in defense of human rights, is actually divine obedience . However, none of these objections are decisive against every act of civil justification. Above all, because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. A closer analysis makes clear, however, that it signifies a radical departure from the practice he defended in the Letter. Whereas in that earlier account he explained that civil disobedience must be practiced only for the right reasons, in the right spirit, and by the right people, the mass civil disobedience he advocated in 1967 effects decisive modifications of all three of those regulating conditions. Such questions reflect more than merely theoretical concerns. The orthodox definition of civil disobedience notes that civil disobedience is both illegal and civil, takes place in public, involves an act of protest, is nonviolent, is conscientiously-motivated, and involves both acceptance of the legitimacy of the system and submission to arrest and punishment. When the civil disobedient says that he is above the law, he is saying that democracy is beneath him. Is there any tenable moral distinction between the intimidation he equivocally decried and the disruption and coercion he advocated as elements of his mature form of civil disobedience? An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. An unjust law, he continued, invoking St. Thomas Aquinas, is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law or natural law. A law that uplifts human personality is just, and one that degrades human personality is unjust. Governmentally mandated segregation by color is unjust, because it distort[s] the soul and damages the personality, producing in perpetrators and victims false senses of superiority and inferiority. Now, millions of people are being strangled that way.. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world. 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. Many officials and theorists nowadays concede that civil disobedience can be morally justified, while maintaining the need to criminally punish civil disobedients, on the basis of arguments very . He reiterated his calls for nonviolent action, including civil disobedience, but this time in a significantly modified form. 3. 5 Pros and Cons of Civil Disobedience | APECSEC.org Americans trust in government has fallen to historic lows as our partisan divisions and animosities have intensified; In the recent wave of protests and calls for protest one can find semblances of the first approach, but those more closely resembling the second model have predominated. Why Civil Disobedience Is Morally Justified Essay 9. Civil disobedience under these circumstances is at best deplorable and at worst destructive. Mindful of the difficulties involved, King wrote, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. First, I argue that, in an otherwise legitimate state, civil disobedience is morally justified or excusable only in narrowly defined circumstances. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, King recalled the discoveries that would supply the moral power for the social revolution he envisioned. Specific disobedience breeds disrespect and promotes general disobedience. 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. In a general sense, Kings conformity with this precept in the first phase of his activism appears, despite his sometimes eager usage of the language of revolution, in his scrupulous expressions of respect for the principles and institutions established by the American Founders. Civil Disobedience: A Threat to Our Society Under Law Civil Disobedience - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Gandhi's civil disobedience campaigns of the 1920's and 1930's were pivotal factors in attaining independence. Pursuant to his own insistence on respect for law, it appears that Kings proper initial recourse in Birmingham was the legal channel of judicial appeal rather than disobedience, and that until legal and political channels for reform proved clearly unavailing, his justification for his actions should have remained within the realm of positive, constitutional law. Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. An unjust law, he continued, invoking St. Thomas Aquinas, is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law or natural law. A law that uplifts human personality is just, and one that degrades human personality is unjust. Governmentally mandated segregation by color is unjust, because it distort[s] the soul and damages the personality, producing in perpetrators and victims false senses of superiority and inferiority. I have one definition to give. The dangers were sufficiently great that the average person, naturally concerned for the preservation of life and limb, could not be presumed willing or able to brave them. 91 reference notes. In sum, however paradoxical it might appear, Americas founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. PDF 10 - Sample Neg Case on Civil Disobedience - Webflow Such exposure is a condition to be avoided at all costs; to escape or avoid it is the primary objective in the formation of political society. Moreover, all should consider the degree to which the successful practice of civil disobedience in the early 1960s, by virtue of its very success, has functioned in the post-Civil Rights era to normalize the practice of lawbreaking as an element of protest and commensurately to erode popular respect for law. Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus. Despite its shortcomings, the initial model, epitomized in Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail, was marked by a high degree of moral discipline, by professions of conscientious respect for law and for Americas founding principles, and, not by mere coincidence, a remarkable degree of success in achieving its practical objectives. In the Declaration, as previously noted, prudence dictates that action to alter or abolish an unjust order may be taken only by necessityonly after patient sufferance of a long train of abuses, wherein repeated Petitions offered in the most humble terms have been answered only by repeated injury., In the Letter, King contended that the history of race in America met and exceeded those criteria. Legitimate, constitutional government can possess only those powers delegated to it by the people who are its constituents, and the people in turn can delegate only powers they rightfully possess under the law of nature. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706, United States. It is not clear that a patient reliance on the judicial process in the Birmingham campaign would have doomed the direct-action movement to failure, as King feared. In the Letter, King indicated that the sources of his thinking about the moral law were eclectic. What sort of person, marked by what sorts of qualities, volunteers for such training in the first place? PDF The LD File - Weebly The nations experience over the past half-century or so highlights the need for a careful reconsideration of the case for civil disobedience. [REF] It is no less at odds with his insistence that the ultimate objective of direct-action protest and civil disobedience is reconciliation between the erstwhile victims and perpetrators of injustice, enabled by a change of heart in the latter.[REF]. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham, King reported, than in any other city in the nation. In response, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. [REF] Nonetheless, it is significant that King stipulated, as a requisite of civil disobedience, that the practitioner must possess a distinctive set of religiously grounded moral qualities, including a firm commitment to a higher, natural and divine law and a faith that suffering in the service of that law can be redemptive for oneself and others. 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. 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. There must be more than a statement to the larger society; there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point Mass civil disobedience as a new stage of struggle can transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force. Within this broad conceptualization, civil disobedience can take numerous forms and be motivated by different reasons. For his own, very different reasons, King, too, judged the first phase of his movement as only a partial and mixed success. Kings account of unjust laws in the Letter specifically targeted laws in Americas Old South that sustained race-based segregation and disfranchisement, laws inconsistent in principle with any plausible understanding of human moral equality. Justified or not, civil disobedience is liable to legal punishment. And if that official [is nonresponsive], you can say, All right, well wait. And you can settle down in his office for as long a stay as necessary., In advocating this radicalized form of civil disobedience, King contended that those who perceive a serious societal injustice have the right to disobey, Even so, Kings remarks relative to the character and motivations of this newly recruited army suggest that here, too, he departed significantly from his earlier account.
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