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 . Why is civil disobedience not morally justified? - Digglicious.com 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. So understood, Kings later idea of civil disobedience is properly if bluntly characterized as a form of extortion clothed in moral purposes. The practice of civil disobedience required a special kind of personmeaning, in most cases, a specially trained kind of person. The former described the practice of rabid segregationist[s], while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. 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]. 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. On what ground could he continue in his second-phase arguments to affirm the moral imperative of nonviolence, given his justification of coercion? We started havingworkshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves the questions: Are you able to accept blows without retaliating? Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?[REF]. Thus, civil disobedience may be morally justified, even in a democracy. 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. Kings awareness of the power of civil disobedience as a protest method quickened in the course of his first nonviolent direct-action campaign, the Montgomery bus boycott, and developed further as he reflected on the sit-in movement initiated by black college students in early 1960. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS Such protest must be nonviolent and must be animated by a spirit of love for the perpetrators of the injustice against which one protests. Visiting Scholar, 2016-17 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought. Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. Introduction: The Nature and Moral Justification of Civil Disobedience 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. 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. 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. The conventional definition of civil disobedience leaves open some basic and challenging questions concerning its justifying causes and its permissible scope and objectives. These are untenable claims. It is crucial to bear in mind that as the movement proceeded from its first to its second phase, two very different models of civil disobedience emerged. 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. [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. The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation. 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.. 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? 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. Civil Disobedience- an act against a certain law with no violence One thing that comes with civil disobedience is change. 19 Major Pros and Cons of Civil Disobedience - ConnectUS Disobedience Breeds Disrespect Civil disobedience is an ad hoc device at best, and ad hoc measures in a law society are dangerous. Defending human rights in peaceful ways outside "the law" is ultimately a form of defense of and respect for the law. Civil disobedience cannot be an armed struggle. To ward off such disorders, it is necessary to sort out the virtues and vices of Kings arguments and to use the virtues in those arguments to light the way back to the sounder understanding of civil disobedience and the rule of law that is implicit in Americas first principles. Famous examples include Gandhi's Salt March in 1930, Rosa Parks's refusal in 1955 to give up her bus . To such questions King offered no compelling answers. Because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. 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. It is plainly at odds with his insistence on the correspondence of moral ends and moral means. Again, the justification of civil disobedience in this kind of case depends on the particulars. In republican governments, wrote James Madison in. In more recent times, the riots in Baltimore saw the death . In the endeavor to fulfill the law, the would-be reformer must be properly mindful of the danger of destroying it. Rawls indicates that to be completely open and nonviolent manifests one's sincerity, honesty, and the depth of commitment . It centers on King primarily because of the near-universal acclaim now accorded Kings Letter, which stands as the most influential defense of civil disobedience in our time, if not in all U.S. history. As Kings own legacy reveals, however, civil disobedience is complicated in its theoretical basis and problematic in its practical effects. Above all, because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. In the Founders design, of course, the instrument for specifying those delegations is the U.S. Constitution, promulgated as the higher law to which the ruling authority is subject. 6. Some definitions suggest that non-violence"civility" is a necessary condition for political disobedience to qualify as civil disobedience. Fordham Law Review - Fordham University a design to restore or to create a bond of community between the erstwhile victims and perpetrators of the injustice at issue. [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]. Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. 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. Protests against domestic injustices are to be conceived with a view toward preserving or restoring conditions of basic concord. If civil disobedience is a political exercise, there are good normative and pragmatic reasons for adhering to non-violence. Yet despite these shortcomings, his discussion adumbrates several regulating and confining conditions that, properly elaborated, could supply a defensible justification of the practice. 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. Gandhi, a "central figure in the relationship of Congress and the Raj" was able to awaken Indians into political movements. Kings later idea of civil disobedience is properly if bluntly characterized as a form of extortion clothed in moral purposes. For present purposes, the fundamental questions concern whether his judgments to disobey the courts injunction and to justify that disobedience by an appeal to natural and divine law rather than U.S. constitutional law are properly characterized as last resorts, taken in response to a genuine necessity. Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience - Goodreads In the Letter, King contended that as applied to his direct-action campaign, the ordinance that the injunction was issued to enforce was a violation of the U.S. Constitution, in particular of the First Amendments guarantee of rights of peaceful assembly and protest. 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. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. 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 . 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. 51, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.[REF] Madison followed the teaching of John Locke, who explained in his Second Treatise of Government that the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, which stands as the supreme power of the common-wealth.[REF], The constitutional primacy of the legislative power is the institutional corollary of the rule of law. Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason. 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. 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. 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.[REF]. Does the idea of civil disobedience still apply today? That civil disobedience may be practiced only for the right reasons is first and fundamental among the regulating conditions King suggested. King was profoundly alarmed at these events and at the corresponding emergence of the black power faction that rejected his calls for nonviolent means and integrationist ends. A Theory of Civil Disobedience in No Less Than 10 Minutes The former described the practice of rabid segregationist[s], while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. He claims that the government's power is based more on the influence that the majority possesses rather than . 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]. All lawful alternatives are to be attempted prior to the adoption of extra-lawful measures, and all plausibly viable non-revolutionary measures are to be attempted prior to the adoption of revolutionary measures. Civil disobedience, Hugo Bedau noted, "is not just done; it is committed. These prudential regulations circumscribing the right to revolution apply similarly to acts of civil disobedience. 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. Now, millions of people are being strangled that way.[REF], Violent in itself, that injustice was in Kings view also violent in its emerging effectsabove all in the rioting that began in Watts just days after the Voting Rights Act became law and spread, in the two years thereafter, to hundreds of cities across the U.S. As was the case in Watts, the riots were often precipitated by disputes involving policebut evidence suggests that neither charges of police brutality nor discontentment at socioeconomic deprivation was the predominant cause. 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. When these attempts are turned back, civil disobedience then becomes a viable option. However paradoxical it might appear, Americas founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. It is used to prevent more chaos that is to come. [REF] A democracy is as capable of injustice as is a monarchyand a societal majority as capable of it as a government. 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. 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. Justifying Civil Disobedience : an Essay on Political Protest in a To hasten the achievement of his second-phase objectives, King renewed and intensified his call for civil disobedience. Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. DOCX Home - Boone County Schools 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] At bottom, it was this deep mistrust for merely partial, preparatory, or ephemeral gains that moved him to consider civil disobedience a moral imperative. First, I argue that, in an otherwise legitimate state, civil disobedience is morally justified or excusable only in narrowly defined circumstances. He conceded that it was certainly a legitimate concern. Granted, the commitment pledge did not quite signify a religious test for participation; it required meditation on Jesuss teaching, not worship of Jesus, and it required prayer to a God of love, not necessarily to the God Christians recognize. 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. 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. Those two statutes constitute the most ambitious and effective civil- and political-rights guarantees in the nations history, and their enactment coincides with the onset of a profound reformation in Americans moral sentiments about race relations. Civil Disobedience Can Be Justified - DebateWise There is a fire raging now for the Negroes and the poor of this society . In those facts, he discerned an unmistakable pattern, in which a handful of Negroes used gunfire substantially to intimidate, not to kill; and all of the other participants had a different targetproperty. On closer examination, then, the riots were actually characterized by a restraint that gave cause for hopefulness. King characterized poverty and unemployment as deprivations of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and he conceived of poverty as a form of segregation. It is difficult to imagine the change they affected coming about any other way - or certainly as quickly. Vanderbilt Law Review An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice. 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. 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.
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