civil disobedience is not morally justified

Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. Non-violence has traditionally been associated with civil disobedience. Conceiving of civil disobedience as a willing submission of self to a higher discipline, King made clear that this mode of protest carried a high risk. Its aim is to make that society more just, and justice is a stabilizing influence. He proudly described his movement as a mass-action crusade, but by insisting on proper training and character formation, he made clear that not simply anyone was suitable for direct-action protest and civil disobedience: Not all who volunteered could pass our strict tests.[REF]. 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. What is Civil Disobedience? Its primary finding may be summarized in this lesson: Civil disobedience is justifiable but dangerous. [REF] The details of his second-phase proposals varied over time, but the general idea was to call for a new federal antipoverty initiative, unprecedented in size and scope. Many types of objections to civil disobedience have been raised, often based on the view that citizens in a democracy are obliged to obey the law. The practice of civil disobedience must preserve or enhance respect for law and therewith for constitutional republicanism. Civil disobedience is a form of protest intended to draw attention to a wrong or injustice which the protesters believe is sufficiently serious to morally justify violation of the law. Understand laws before you obey them Yes, but yet slightly no. Civil disobedience is the opposite notion to the morality and duty in society. In cases of reformist no less than of revolutionary civil disobedience, it is therefore imperative to define clearly and to circumscribe closely the conditions under which this mode of protest is warranted. What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About Civil Disobedience Civil disobedience and conscientious objection are social practices motivated by moral and political beliefs. The difficulty appears first in the fact that, as King at times acknowledged, his expansive, second-phase conception of rights was rooted in principles outside Americas constitutional tradition: We have left the realm of constitutional rights, he remarked in Where Do We Go From Here? When Is It Okay to Disobey the State? | Catholic Answers Indicative of the moral qualities required are the tenets of the Commitment Card the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) required volunteers to sign: I hereby pledge myselfmy person and bodyto the nonviolent movement. To gain our bearings amid todays protests, characterized more by disruption and coercion than persuasion, we should look beyond contemporary justifications and return to the best of Kings thinkingand beyond King, to the understanding of civil disobedience grounded in Americas first principles. By attaching to the practice of civil disobedience the regulatory conditions that he described in the Letter, King helped contain disorders that might otherwise have so expanded as to scuttle the possibility of meaningful reform. 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. A corollary of Kings earlier position that civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary is that such disobedience should cease as soon as possiblei.e., as soon as the necessary reforms are achieved or lawful, political avenues to their achievement become available. Is civil disobedience morally OK because governments aren't progressive enough when it comes to protecting non-humans? 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. He claims that the government's power is based more on the influence that the majority possesses rather than . For present purposes, however, King serves as a source of useful lessons in both positive and negative ways. Does the idea of civil disobedience still apply today? 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. 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. PDF The LD File - Weebly Among the most striking features of the city riots, he argued, was that the violence, to a startling degree, was focused against property rather than against people. The overwhelming majority of people killed during the riots, he went on, were protesters killed by law enforcement officers. 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. Advocates argue that, when used judiciously, civil disobedience can be a powerful tool for social change, and the climate necessity defense provides a legal framework for activists to make their case in court. Civic Disobedience and Climate Change | HuffPost Religion 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. Against his critics, King insisted that civil disobedience signifies no disrespect but, to the contrary, the highest respect for law.[REF] For King, as in the logic of the Declaration, civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary and only so far as necessary to the purpose of reforming an unjust human law. How, for instance, are we to know that protestors claims of injustice are valid and the changes they demand are salutary? Among the most striking features of the city riots, he argued, was that the violence, to a startling degree, was focused against property rather than against people. The overwhelming majority of people killed during the riots, he went on, were protesters killed by law enforcement officers. 33 The training that protesters received was rigorous in itself, but the moral formation King judged requisite to nonviolent protest and properly civil disobedience required more than any relatively brief workshop could produce. 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. 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.[REF], In advocating this radicalized form of civil disobedience, King contended that those who perceive a serious societal injustice have the right to disobey just laws to the end of reforming unjust laws or policies. So there are three parts to my definition. The legislative must be the primary, supreme power because the alternative to legislative supremacy is subjection to the arbitrary will of anotherto the will of an unchecked, potentially despotic prince or ruling class. Evaluating the Ethical Dimensions of Indigenous Civil Resistance As Kings own legacy reveals, however, civil disobedience is complicated in its theoretical basis and problematic in its practical effects. That sort of care is especially needed at the present time. He conceded that it was certainly a legitimate concern. Famous examples include Gandhi's Salt March in 1930, Rosa Parks's refusal in 1955 to give up her bus . 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. The substitutes for civil disobedience in a democracy include the court system, and at another level, the legis-lature. 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]. 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. He is the author of Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) and Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism (University Press of Kansas, 2008). I do not share Jason's optimism concerning the ease of questions surrounding civil . 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. 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. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Courts decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools [o]ne may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?[REF], The objection was familiar to King. Kings distinction between disobedience that is evasive or defiant and disobedience marked by acceptance of the authority of law is vividly meaningful in context. 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. Resolved: Civil Disobedience in a democracy is morally justified. It is meaningful, if unsurprising, that the SCLC required of protesters a commitment suffused with the moral spirit of Christianity. 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. 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 epistemic situation of the would-be defiant is more difficult. 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. 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]. [REF] Its present legitimacy and prestige, however, reflect the influence of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, a movement characterized by its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., as the greatest mass-action crusade for freedom that has ever occurred in American history.[REF] Prompted by that movement, America has undergone sea changes in law and in public sentiment regarding race relations and the antidiscrimination idea, and Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail, containing his most elaborate justification of the practice of civil disobedience, has become a widely anthologized writing and a fixture in U.S. secondary and collegiate civics education. Hacking as Politically Motivated Civil Disobedience: Is Hacktivism Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful. 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.. Rawls argues that civil disobedience, if it is engaged in only when justified, will be a stabilizing force on society. Anger at the brutality inflicted upon King and the southern protesters was, however, widespread among northern blacks. A delegation of poor people can walk into a high officials office with a carefully, collectively prepared list of demands. Whatever the broader causes, the Watts riots left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. Civil Disobedience and Its Justification - LinkedIn 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. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way . Their appeal provided a perfect occasion for a response from King, who with other movement leaders had been contemplating, since a previous campaign in Albany, Georgia, the composition of a prison epistle to serve as a manifesto for their movement. We should explore legal channels first. Civil Disobedience: A Necessary Freedom 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. Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus. There is a fire raging now for the Negroes and the poor of this society . When Locke said the ruling power ought to govern by law, he meant that the law must rule so that both the people may know their duty and the rulers too kept within their bounds.[REF] In Lockes design and in that of the American Founders, governmental powers are bounded in that they are limited to those specifically delegated by the people who are to be subject to them. [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? Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. [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]. Similarities Between Civil Disobedience And Martin Luther | Bartleby Gandhi's civil disobedience campaigns of the 1920's and 1930's were pivotal factors in attaining independence. 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. Civil disobedience is simply not like other acts in which menstand up courageously for their principles. Gandhi, a "central figure in the relationship of Congress and the Raj" was able to awaken Indians into political movements. 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.". 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. Civil disobedience can thus be justified at least where the moral duty to obey is nonbinding. A Theory of Civil Disobedience in No Less Than 10 Minutes [We] will move on Washington, he resolved, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action . Essay Examples about Civil Disobedience - edufixers.com In summary, as King presented it in the Letter, civil disobedience may only be undertaken: (1) for the right reasons; (2) in the right spirit; and (3) by the right people. [REF], It follows that should government attempt to exercise powers beyond those duly delegated to it, it would forfeit its legitimacy and therewith its claim to popular allegiance and obedience. Aspects of civil disobedience. These prudential regulations circumscribing the right to revolution apply similarly to acts of civil disobedience. This idea of rightful disobedience has inspired protests in various degrees and kinds in America ever since the Boston Tea Party, and it continues to inspire such actions even to the present day. Why Civil Disobedience Is Morally Justified Essay "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. Second, I attempt to identify a reliable . Whatever the broader causes, the Watts riots left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. Civil disobedience, in defense of human rights, is actually divine obedience . The Limits and Dangers of Civil Disobedience: The Case of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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. For enthusiasts of rightful disobedience (civil or not), events such as the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement serve as congenial examplesbut the participants in the slaveholders rebellion of 1861 and the mid-20th century campaign of massive resistance to desegregation no less firmly believed their causes to be just. 10. 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. 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. Civil disobedience should not be our first remedy to an unjust situation. 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.[REF]. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. For both Locke and the Founders, however, the ultimate law to which human government is subjectincluding the fundamental legislative authority of constitution-framers and ratifiersis a law beyond human making, the law of nature. Such protest must be nonviolent and must be animated by a spirit of love for the perpetrators of the injustice against which one protests. JoanSpero and Jeffrey Hart, "Democracy." The Politics of International Economic Relations. In the years that followed, King would radicalize his calls for civil disobedience. As we will see, American civil disobedience in its most widely admired form, in the theory and practice of King, is mainlybut not perfectlyin accord with those founding principles. Lockdown orders are not justified. Here is the key point: Kings actions in Birmingham and elsewhere were born of a deep impatience, informed, as he wrote in the Letter, by a centuries-long history of injustice, including promises made and unfulfilled, that had taught him to equate slow or partial progress with no progress: Half a loaf is no bread.[REF] Despite his generally gracious recognition of NAACP efforts, King held that the courtroom victories won by that senior organization, along with the other apparent successes achieved in the electoral branches to that point, would prove practically worthless unless reinforced by further, stronger measures that would be enacted only in response to sustained, intensified pressure. A Debate About Whether or Not Civil Disobedience Is Justified and 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. Remember always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliationnot victory. Most acts of civil disobedience are justifiable. 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. 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. 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. Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy. Civil disobedience is about purposefully disobeying a law or rule to make a point, to try and change laws and rules in a specific situation, and is disobedience that is executed in a non-violent manner. In this respect, his dissatisfaction with the half a loaf gained in previous decades applied also to his movements accomplishments, which marked, in his view, not the end of its work but only the end of the beginning, as President Lyndon Johnson said in anticipation of the Voting Rights Act.[REF]. 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? Because they allow sentient animals to be tortured in factory farms, or. He then turned to their specific objection to the tactic of civil disobedience. Kings second main regulating condition, that civil disobedience must be undertaken in the right spirit, means foremost that civil disobedience must convey a proper respect for law. 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. 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]. This was my first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance., A still more powerful influence was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, whose teaching King discovered as a seminary student a few years thereafter. 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.[REF]. Critics argue that it promotes lawlessness and undermines the rule of . In the Letter, King indicated that the sources of his thinking about the moral law were eclectic. Nor did he address in the Letter the implications of his idea of equality for other, more difficult questions pertaining to justice in race relations and to the cause of social and political equality in generalquestions controversial even among proponents of equality. 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]. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. Their letter, entitled An Appeal to Law and Order and Common Sense, urged the protesters to desist, arguing that direct-action street protests, especially those involving lawbreaking, were unhelpful as means for repairing race relations in Birmingham. " is the official definition from the Britannica Encyclopedia. Kings Classic Exposition of Civil Disobedience: The Letter from Birmingham Jail, On Friday, April 10, 1963Good FridayKing marched purposefully to a Birmingham jail cell, where he was confined for leading a protest march in violation of a local ordinance. Amid these conditions, a reconsideration of King could serve as a useful first stepdrawing our guidance from the. The conventional definition of civil disobedience leaves open some basic and challenging questions concerning its justifying causes and its permissible scope and objectives. " Democracy. Revolution, the outermost extreme among acts of protest or resistance, is justified, according to the Declaration, only where all of the following conditions are present: Informing the Declarations admonition of prudence is the rule that revolutionary actions are to be taken only as a last resortonly in acquiescence to necessity, as the Declaration states, to the end of correcting injustice. [REF], During my student days at Morehouse, King wrote, I read Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience for the first time. [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. Is civil disobedience wrong? - Studybuff The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation. 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 .

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