Recall, too, however, that civil disobedience as King conceived it was to be practiced only so far as necessary. With Selma and the Voting Rights Act, King wrote in his final book, Where Do We Go From Here? Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful. 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. However paradoxical it might appear, Americas founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. Pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free. 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. Vanderbilt Law Review Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. First, it wrongly presupposes that committing civil disobedience is morally permissible as a general matter of moral principle. Civil disobedience cannot be an armed struggle. To practice civil disobedience only where necessary means, in the precise sense, to practice it as a next-to-last resort, short only of uncivil or violent resistance to tyranny. 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. There is, consequently, no moral obligation to obey them. 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. 10. Protests against domestic injustices are to be conceived with a view toward preserving or restoring conditions of basic concord. DOCX Home - Boone County Schools 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. and we are entering the area of human rights.[REF] To say that Kings later claims about rights fall outside Americas constitutional tradition is not necessarily to discredit them, but by construing poverty itself as indicative of injustice, irrespective of any action or inaction by those who suffer it, he implicitly placed rights on an infirm foundation. Those evils did ensuebut as King emphasized, they came in the main from the actions of segregations defenders, not from its protesters. 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. 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]. 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. Reduced to its essence, Kings response appears in a simple, if paradoxical formulation: Civil disobedience is not lawlessness but instead a higher form of lawfulness. A consideration of Americas first principles, as explicated in the political thought informing the American Founding, corroborates Kings view. 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]. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. 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. In Kings account, therefore, justice entails the principle of equality under law, and legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed. Admirers of King and the movement might contend further that these successes were achieved by generally peaceful means, without effecting lasting ruptures in civil order in the southern venues in which protesters campaigned. What defensible basis is there for his finding of a core of nonviolence in acts of intimidation against persons and of violence against property? 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. Complications arise foremost from the fact that King did not hold a unitary and coherent position on civil 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. 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. 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. Non-violence has traditionally been associated with civil disobedience. 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. 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. On a Moral Right to Civil Disobedience* | Ethics: Vol 117, No 2 Disobedience Breeds Disrespect Civil disobedience is an ad hoc device at best, and ad hoc measures in a law society are dangerous. 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. 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). The eight were not segregationists; they were moderate proponents of gradual integration. Positive or man-made law must conform with higher lawwith natural or divine law. The Climate Necessity Defense: How activists are using civil Reasons. 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. Civil disobedience is simply not like other acts in which menstand up courageously for their principles. 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 . This upsurge appears unlikely soon to abate. These prudential regulations circumscribing the right to revolution apply similarly to acts of civil disobedience. Classically, they violate the law they are protesting, such as segregation or draft laws, but sometimes they violate other laws which they find unobjectionable, such as trespass or traffic laws. The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation. 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. However, the climate necessity defense is not without controversy. 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. Thus, civil disobedience may be morally justified, even in a democracy. Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration. 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. Against their own purposes, they corroborate warnings by critics to the effect that acts of purportedly civil disobedience are likely to turn lawless and violent.[REF]. 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. 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. 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. 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. It is a powerful means of combating unjust laws, and freeing society from oppressive restrictions. 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. Such a condition poses a clear danger to the rule of law. The former described the practice of rabid segregationist[s], while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. 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. 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. [REF] It reached its full fruition in the pivotal campaign of the entire movement, the Birmingham campaign in the spring of 1963, which occasioned his most extended and influential reflection on the subject. 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. The action in Birmingham was Kings first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. If it conflicts with the higher law, it cannot be binding as law. An aggrieved minority also has a right to take actions necessary and proper to prevent or correct governmental or societal transgressions.[REF]. Similarities Between Civil Disobedience And Martin Luther | Bartleby As Kings own legacy reveals, however, civil disobedience is complicated in its theoretical basis and problematic in its practical effects. . 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. 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]. Civil disobedience in a democracy is not morally justified because it poses an unacceptable threat to the rule of law. The Birmingham campaign, epitomized by the now-canonical Letter, is credited with generating an irresistible momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Civil Disobedience and Americas First Principles. [REF] A democracy is as capable of injustice as is a monarchyand a societal majority as capable of it as a government. [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. Kings Defense: The Right Reasons. 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. Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: TEN-HERNG LAI, CHONG-MING LIM Environmental Activism and the Fairness of Costs Argument for Uncivil Disobedience, Journal of the American Philosophical Association 19 (Jan 2023): 1-20. is civil disobedience in a democracy morally justified?.pdf 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]. Is Teen Depression Epidemic Result of Too Much Social Media, Too Little Religion? 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. He claims that the government's power is based more on the influence that the majority possesses rather than . Like Gandhi, King believed that citizens have a duty to engage in . 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]. 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. Kings illustrations of the sort of actions he envisioned are useful in clarifying the distinction. One cannot say that Kings explanation of the distinction between just and unjust laws suffices in itself to ward off the charges of anarchism leveled by critics. 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. 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. Some definitions suggest that non-violence"civility" is a necessary condition for political disobedience to qualify as civil disobedience. This fact, along with the profession of nonviolence, helps explain the mainstream legitimacy accorded such acts, but it also means that civil disobedience so conceived may pose a greater threat to Americas republican constitutional order than would a conception of civil disobedience as an inherently revolutionary practice. 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. Further, because the rule of law is not only indispensable to free and just government but also inherently fragile, the practice of disobedient protest can only qualify as properly civil if it is circumscribed with the greatest care. Within this broad conceptualization, civil disobedience can take numerous forms and be motivated by different reasons. 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. 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. What defensible basis is there for his finding of a core of nonviolence in acts of intimidation against persons and of violence against property? That same day, the local newspaper published a public letter addressed to King and his fellow protesters, written by a group of eight Birmingham clergy (seven Christian pastors and one rabbi). Civil disobedience is a form of civil war An act of civil disobedience sets a precedence of breaking the law. The Limits and Dangers of Civil Disobedience: The Case of Martin Luther While it is plausible to think that unlawful acts of civil disobedience should not, as a moral matter, be punished because of their potential contributions to political debate, it does not follow that those acts are . 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. 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 . King called this modified conception a more mature form of civil disobedience. King departed from his previously held regulatory principles in another, related respect. 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. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. That sort of care is especially needed at the present time. 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. Nonetheless, critics of Kings arguments and actions relative to civil disobedience even in this more successful phase of his career have a point in warning of their tendency to propagate disrespect for law and an enthusiasm for (purportedly) righteous disobedience. 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.. 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. 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. To such questions King offered no compelling answers. Civil Disobedience, Costly Signals, and Leveraging Injustice 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 republican governments, wrote James Madison in. 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[REF]) or elsewhere in his published work. 19 Major Pros and Cons of Civil Disobedience - ConnectUS Understand laws before you obey them Yes, but yet slightly no. This right, like every other, however, comes with correlative responsibilities, among which the most fundamental are responsibilities to law and republican government. 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. The conclusion seems inescapable that in his desperate zeal to add rapid socioeconomic uplift to his movements previous victories in securing civil and political rights, King again neglected a piece of wise counsel from Rustin, who observed: There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement which would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that absence of power also corrupts.[REF] Especially in his final two years, King overestimated his ability to govern the anger of the urban poor that he purposely assisted in arousing. To the contrary, it signifies a purposeful encroachment on others rights and interests as members of civil society. 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. 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.". Whether dissension prefer one run of protest to another depends upon the particular historical . 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.
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