The inherent right of a citizen to be civil is civil disobedience as this implies a great amount of individual discipline and sacrifice. To be civil means to be passive in form of protest, where refusal to obey the law is needed when the law goes against humanity and basic civil rights and freedoms. Civil disobedience in certain cases is a very effective tool for rejecting the unjust demands, laws and commands of a coercive power, and in many cases a strong method of peaceful protest. This concept is crucial when the people en mass form unity against their oppressors. Such resistance is usually for the greater good of society as it represents the discontent of a general population. Civilians must profess discontent since it is necessary to understand current and ongoing issues that harm society as a whole. Justification of disobedience comes when the state does not have the moral, attentive, and supportive capacity to rule well among its citizens, which can lead to excessive coercion, ignorance, and support for small ruling elites. People have every right to defend themselves, even if sacrifice and consequences are at hand. This paper will argue the justification of civil disobedience so long as it remains non-violent and is used to defy the powers of the state and government when the rule of law is in need change for the greater good.
The state must support the interest of its people or else it has nothing to govern. The legitimacy of laws has to be questioned and challenged peacefully. As an informal and non-violent form of protest, civil disobedience is implemented with the intention of engaging the formal institutions of the state in order to seek a sense of justice for the political community as a whole. (2). Underst...
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...trated through civil disobedience, which is halted by an authority that is greatly influenced by the ruling elite. In a similar case, Martin Luther King fought for black rights under racist attacks and a racist state. He was jailed numerous times, and ultimately killed for his actions, leaving a key legacy for the future to come. “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” (King 1963). His statement expresses the will to abide with the law as long as they are fair and equal among all citizens. Relating this to aboriginal communities in Canada, it is accurate to say that they are mostly unfavoured by the constitution, and need to be included in the planning process to voice their concerns as equal citizens. Policies that conflict with the public interest must be broken.
Civil disobedience has its roots in one of this country’s most fundamental principles: popular sovereignty. The people hold the power, and those entrusted to govern by the people must wield
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr passed away from a sniper’s bullet. He gave us thirteen years of nonviolent protest during the civil rights movement of the 1950’s. Before I can give my opinion on the history of race relations in the United States since King’s assassination in 1968 strengthened or weakened his arguments on the necessity and value of civil disobedience? You should know the meaning of civil disobedience. The word civil has several definitions. “The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay (by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849) is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance”.
From the monarchs of the ancient era to the democracy of today, order has been maintained by means of rules and regulations known as laws. Compliance with these laws is enforced through punishments ranging in severity according to the crimes committed to reduce violence and misconduct from individuals within a society. However, just as citizens consent to abide by the laws of the state in which they reside, one is compelled to preserve justice and condemn the unjust decisions of man when the social contract contradicts the laws sanctioned by God. Approaching this conflict between natural and manmade laws in a non-violent manner is called “civil disobedience”.
The following essay will attempt to evaluate the approach taken by Dworkin and Habermas on their views of civil disobedience. The two main pieces of literature referred to will be Dworkin?s paper on 'Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest?' and Habermas's paper on 'Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State.' An outline of both Dworkin's and Habermas's approach will be given , further discussion will then focus on a reflective evaluation of these approaches. Firstly though, it is worth commenting on civil disobedience in a more general context. Most would agree that civil disobedience is a 'vital and protected form of political communication in modern constitutional democracies' and further the 'civil disobedience has a legitimate if informal place in the political culture of the community.' Civil disobedience can basically be broken down into two methods, either intentionally violating the law and thus incurring arrest (persuasive), or using the power of the masses to make prosecution too costly to pursue (non persuasive).
There are many features of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience according to Rawls must be political in nature; agents engaged in civil disobedience must be appealing to a “common conception of justice”. It is aimed at changing the law, thus, it is a method requiring political engagement. The goal of this is to bring the law into conformity with the theory of justice. In order to make it a particularly clear case of rejecting the ou...
Civil disobedience has been around for a long time. In Bible times Christians would disobey laws that would go against their beliefs, such as the law that they couldn’t preach. (Acts 4) Christians still disobey laws in many countries that do not let them practice their faith, some end up in jail or killed.
Despite the belief that fighting with violence is effective, civil disobedience has been tried throughout history and been successful. Fighting violence with violence leaves no oppertunity for peace to work. By refusing to fight back violently, Martin Luther King Jr. took a race of people, taught them the value of their voice, and they earned the right to vote. Henry David Thoreau presented his doctrine that no man should cooperate with laws that are unjust, but, he must be willing to accept the punishment society sets for breaking those laws, and hundreds of years later, people are still inspired by his words. Mohandas K. Gandhi lead an entire country to its freedom, using only his morals and faith to guide him, as well as those who followed him, proving that one man can make a difference. Civil disobedience is the single tool that any person can use to fight for what they want, and they will be heard. After centuries of questioning it, it appears that the pen truly is mightier than the sword.
The political concepts of justice and how a society should be governed have dominated literature through out human history. The concept of peacefully resisting laws set by a governing force can be first be depicted in the world of the Ancient Greeks in the works of Sophocles and actions of Socrates. This popular idea has developed over the centuries and is commonly known today as civil disobedience. Due to the works of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. civil disobedience is a well-known political action to Americans; first in the application against slavery and second in the application against segregation. Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” and King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” are the leading arguments in defining and encouraging the use of civil disobedience to produce justice from the government despite differences in their separate applications.
Laws are implemented to enforce civil proceedings in society, thereby enabling individuals to operate and function within a morally stable population. But there is a delicate and uncertain balance between doing so and restricting personal freedoms--for though individuals should not be wholly free to conduct themselves as they please (for fear of anarchy), neither should they be confined to a level by which they are unable to direct their life’s course and pursue personal betterment. When citizens feel this to be the case, they have the right to peacefully display their grievances with enacted law for the advocation of positive change in the society. For if a society is truly free, the government
Justice is often misconceived as injustice, and thus some essential matters that require more legal attention than the others are neglected; ergo, some individuals aim to change that. The principles of civil disobedience, which are advocated in both “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. to the society, are present up to this time in the U.S. for that purpose. To begin with, Thoreau expresses that civil disobedience should be more implemented when the just resistance of the minority is seen legally unjust to the structure conformed by the majority. Supporting his position, Thoreau utilizes the role of the national tax in his time; its use which demoralizes the foreign relationship of the U.S.; its use which “enables the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood”; its use which supports “the present Mexican War” (Thoreau 948, 940).
After spending a night in jail for his tax evasion, he became inspired to write “Civil Disobedience.” In this essay, he discusses the importance of detaching one’s self from the State and the power it holds over its people, by refraining from paying taxes and putting money into the government. The idea of allowing one’s self to be arrested in order to withhold one’s own values, rather than blindly following the mandates of the government, has inspired other civil rights activists throughout history, such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. Both these men fought against unjust laws, using non-violent, yet effective, methods of protest.
Opposition to civil disobedience is doing just that: refusing to acknowledge the problems of others because they are not personally applicable. Resistance of unjust laws by varying people groups is a crucial part of democracy, and it accomplishes two key things: drawing public attention and creating positive environments for those who support the movement.
Civil disobedience allows for vast changes in government. U.S. Citizens have been able to ban together and organize nonviolent protests which have lead to increased rights to minorities, workers and women. These protests allow people to be heard, and play an active part in government. The most successfully protests tend to be large, nonviolent, and public. This allows for the idea to be shared with others, showing many find the law unjust, while still retaining the credibility of the protesters.
The Role of Civil Disobedience in Democracy. " Civil Liberties Monitoring Project. American Civil Liberties Monitoring Project, Summer 1998. Web. The Web.
While Civil disobedience (CD) is the act of opposing a law that an individual may not agree with but peacefully deciding to disobey it, it could have both some positive and negative effects on a free society. I would like to elaborate on both aspects because CD is a reality that I have seen practiced on numerous occasions in the past year. In society’s current condition of heightened free speech rather the message be love or hate, it has impacted humanity in a harsh way that inevitably feels as if recovery will be a long stretch ahead. Through protests, violence, hate and love speech, riots, acts of terrorism, and many more to name, I have seen instances where those who practiced peaceful resistance were still treated as if they had done a violent crime. As long as peaceful resistance is tolerated across the board being inclusive of all humanity with no ill effects, I believe that in return more