Third, and related, civil disobedients often invite, and might inspire, other citizens to do what they do. Such risk of proliferation of civil disobedience and, further, of its escalation into lawlessness and violence, may support the imposition of more severe punishment for agents engaged in civil disobedience.
However, both the models of civil disobedience presented above, which stress its role and value in liberal democracies, and the arguments for the right to civil disobedience examined below, strongly push for the opposite view that civil disobedients, if punished at all, should be dealt with more leniently than others who have offended.
The government can exercise its responsibility of leniency by not prosecuting civil disobedience at all, depending on the balance of reasons, including individual rights, state interests, social costs, and constitutional benefits. In general, prosecutors should not charge disobedients with the most serious offenses applicable and judges should give them light sentences.
Leniency follows from the recognition of the special constitutional status of civil disobedience. In this view, officials at all levels have the discretion to not sanction civil disobedients, and they should use it. Prosecutors have and should use their discretion not to press charges against civil disobedients in some cases, or to charge them with the least serious offense possible. Dworkin urges judges to engage in an open dialogue with civil disobedients at least those who articulate legal arguments in defense of their actions and dismiss their charges after hearing them, or to use their discretion in sentencing, for instance by accepting guilty pleas or guilty verdicts but imposing trivial punishments.
To the contrary, judges might well systematically decide against civil disobedients, upholding the special interests of the ruling class of which they are part. For Rawls, there is only a moral right to engage in justified civil disobedience. Dworkin outlines what such a right of conduct might look like, analogizing civil disobedients with Supreme Court justices, who test the constitutional validity of unjust law through direct disobedience of that law.
For the latter, Dworkin argues that utilitarian reasons for punishing should be weighed against the fact that the accused acted out of principled convictions, and that the balance should generally favor leniency. Joseph Raz puts forward a different account of the right to civil disobedience, insisting that this right extends to cases in which people ought not to exercise the right: it is part of the nature and purpose of rights of conduct that they give persons a protected sphere in which to act rightly or wrongly.
To say that there is a right to civil disobedience is to allow the legitimacy of resorting to this form of political action for causes one opposes Raz , By contrast, in a liberal state, the right to political activity is, by hypothesis, adequately protected by law and, hence, the right to political participation cannot ground a right to civil disobedience.
A different view of rights holds that when a person appeals to political participation rights to defend her disobedience, she does not necessarily criticize the law for outlawing her action. Lefkowitz maintains that members of minorities can appreciate that democratic discussions often must be cut short so that decisions may be taken, and those who engage in civil disobedience may view current policy as the best compromise between the need to act and the need to accommodate continued debate.
Nonetheless, they also can point out that, with greater resources or further time for debate, their view might have held sway. Given this possibility, the right to political participation must include a right to continue to contest the result after the votes are counted or the decisions taken.
And this right should include suitably constrained civil disobedience because the best conception of political participation rights is one that reduces as much as possible the impact that luck has on the popularity of a view Lefkowitz ; see also Smith , ch. An alternative response to Raz questions whether the right to civil disobedience must be derived from rights to political participation.
Brownlee , ch. Whether such a right would fall under participation rights depends on the expansiveness of the latter rights. When the right to participate is understood to accommodate only legal protest, then the right conscientiously to object, which commonsensically includes civil disobedience, must be viewed as distinct from political participation rights. A further challenge to a regime-focused account is that real societies do not align with a dichotomy between liberal and illiberal regimes; rather they fall along a spectrum of liberality and illiberality, being both more or less liberal relative to each other and being more or less liberal in some domains than in others.
Philosophers have typically focused on the question of how courts should treat civil disobedients, while neglecting to apply that question to law enforcement. Yet the police have much discretion in how to deal with civil disobedients.
In particular, they have no obligation to arrest protesters when they commit minor violations of the law such as traffic obstruction: accommodation of and communication with protesters is something they can but all too rarely decide to do.
Instead, many governments practice militarized repression of protests. Local police departments in the U. Also, the British government sought to strengthen public order laws and secure new police powers to crack down on Extinction Rebellion XR , the global environmental movement whose street protests, die-ins, and roadblocks for climate justice have brought cities to a standstill.
Accommodation requires communication channels between police and activists and involves strategies such as pre-negotiated arrests. While the U. Neither approach respects anything like a right to civil disobedience. A constitutional government committed to recognizing the right to civil disobedience would also have to reform part of its criminal laws and make available certain defenses.
Brownlee proposes two. Second, states should accept necessity as a justificatory defense for civil disobedience undertaken as a reasonable and parsimonious response to violations of and threats to non-contingent basic needs Brownlee , ch.
As these defenses suggest, constitutionally recognizing civil disobedience does not mean making civil disobedience legal. Disobedients would still be arrested and prosecuted, but they would get to explain and defend their actions in court. They would be heard. Even so, civil disobedience remains an enduring, vibrant part of political activism and, increasingly, benefits from transnational alliances.
Theorists have long assumed that civil disobedience only begs justification in liberal, democratic societies — the best real-world candidates for legitimate states.
However, civil disobedience also raises questions in undemocratic and illegitimate contexts, regarding its overall role, strategic value, and tactical efficacy.
Yet they still beg significant questions concerning the proper contours of extra-institutional dissident politics and the justification of uncivil and forceful tactics in repressive contexts, including violence against police and the destruction of pro-China shops and Chinese banks.
Finally, whereas theorists have tended to think of civil disobedience as generally undertaken to achieve worthy public goals, liberal democratic states have recently witnessed much disobedience in pursuit of anti-democratic and illiberal goals, including conscientious refusal to abide by antidiscrimination statutes and violations of, and protests against, laws requiring the provision of reproductive services and the public health measures enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
We may need a different lens than liberal and democratic theorists have offered to evaluate the full range of conservative social movements, counter-movements, and reactionary movements which resort to civil and other forms of disobedience. Thanks to Kelsey Vicar for research assistance. Features of Civil Disobedience 1. Other Types of Protest 2. Justification 3. Responding to Civil Disobedience 4. Features of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau is widely credited with coining the term civil disobedience.
Other Types of Protest Although civil disobedience often overlaps broadly with other types of dissent, nevertheless some distinctions may be drawn between the key features of civil disobedience and the key features of these other practices.
Justification The task of defending civil disobedience is commonly undertaken with the assumption that in reasonably just, liberal societies people have a general moral duty to follow the law often called political obligation.
Responding to Civil Disobedience How should the state respond to civil disobedience? Bedau, Hugo A. Civil Disobedience in Focus , London: Routledge. Scheuerman ed. Burns and H. Hart eds. Brownlee, Kimberley, Owen ed. Celikates, R. Kreite, and T. Wesche eds. Garner, and S. Ferzan and L. Alexander eds. Schwartzberg ed. Duff, Antony and Garland David eds. Dworkin, Ronald, , Taking Rights Seriously , 5th ed. Fanon, Frantz, [], The Wretched of the Earth , trans.
Philcox, New York: Grove Press. Duff and D. Garland eds. Finlay, Christopher J. Duncan ed. Hanson, Russell L. Torpey, trans. Berkeley Journal of Sociology , 95— Rehg, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hidalgo, Javier S. Himma ed. King Jr. Chaos or Community? Bedau ed. Many were breadwinners, or worked long shifts as servants or in factories, returning home to care for children and keep the house.
The Representation of the People Act granted women over the age of 30 the right to vote in Britain. Full suffrage, that is the right to vote over the age of 21, in accordance with male voting, was passed in The Suffragette victory in Britain followed years of protest, struggle and inconceivable hardship.
Each woman chose her role and every role was important. Thirty five years previously, in , the women of New Zealand were first to win the vote. Saudi Arabia granted women suffrage in Revolution may take decades, but when it eventually comes, it can have an everlasting impact on the course of history.
Forced to pay inflated prices for the salt which keeps them alive, thousands of Indians follow one man on the long road to victory and independence. The Salt Act prohibited the people of India, while under British rule, from collecting, producing or selling salt.
The poor suffered most as they could not afford to buy the heavily taxed salt, a mineral vital for human metabolism in hot, humid climates. Those who broke the law were imprisoned.
Mahatma Gandhi left his ashram in Sabarmati on 12 March with 78 followers, to be joined by tens of thousands of others along the mile march to the Arabian Sea. By lifting salt from the ground in the coastal town of Dandi on 6th April, he openly defied British law. Gandhi had mobilised the satyagrahi, a philosophy of truth-focused, non-violent non-cooperation.
As part of the Civil Disobedience Movement, thousands more followed Gandhi's lead, with salt being made, bought and sold illegally all across India.
The Salt March and the ensuing Civil Disobedience Movement shook the foundations of the British Empire, while providing a turning point on the road to Indian independence in It was a simple yet defiant act of civil disobedience by people of conviction and courage, taking a stand against a giant world power. When an African American schoolgirl is ordered to give up her seat to a white woman, the abolitionists provide her with the strength to stay where she is.
At the age of 15, schoolgirl Claudette Colvin became the first African American to refuse to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Colvin stated she felt the hands of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth holding her down. She was dragged from the bus and subjected to sexist and racist behaviour before being arrested and held in an adult jail. As news spread of the boycott, African American leaders across Montgomery began to lend their support.
From December 5, to December 20, , approximately 40, African Americans refused to travel on Montgomery buses. The protestors were determined to continue until the city met with their demands, which included the hiring of black bus drivers and a first-come first-seated policy.
Ultimately a group of five Montgomery women sued the city in the U. District Court, seeking to have the segregation laws totally invalidated. In December , the US Supreme Court declared segregation laws in Alabama to be anti-constitutional although this did not apply to interstate buses. The legal case, which ended the boycott, was partially built on the testimony of Claudette Colvin. It was not until , with Jim Crow laws overturned by the Civil Rights Act, that segregation was banned.
Two hundred people turn their back on abuse and move to settle on traditional land. They refuse to leave, demanding the rightful return of the land to the indigenous people.
Gurindji tribal elder Vincent Lingiari led two hundred pastoral workers away from the privately owned Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory, as a protest against low pay, poverty and decades of abuse. The strike lasted seven years. It was the precursor to lands rights legislation almost ten years later when, in , square kilometers of Australian land was the first returned to the Gurindji tribe. In , The Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory Act was signed, allowing indigenous people to claim traditional and spiritual land.
Four men walk into a bar and ask to be served. Sevice is denied because they are gay — the men risk arrest to ensure their story is reported and shared. In New York City, serving alcohol to homosexuals was illegal.
Many lives were destroyed as a result. This is thought to be the first organised act of civil disobedience by gay people. Service was denied and the incident was widely reported in the press. Within a year, New York State courts ended the practice of using gay patronage as an excuse for revoking liquor licences; thus opening the way for licenced gay bars. Influenced by the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters by black civil rights protestors, this was a brilliant example of how the non-violent, courteous action of four brave individuals led to societal change and the reframing of public understanding.
As a world superpower destroys a tiny island with bombs and bullets, undeterred inhabitants refuse to surrender the fight to reclaim their home. In , Culebra islanders undertook a series of protests against the United States Navy for its use of the island for military training exercises.
Homes were torn down, and targets erected. A three mile exclusion zone was set around the island, making prisoners of the island's inhabitants.
Little fishing remained and any cattle were grazed on navy owned land. Unwilling to withdraw claims to the whole island, protestors built a chapel in just three days on Flamingo Beach, a restricted, major target area, using only crude tools. US Marshals ordered them to leave but they refused and six people were arrested. Six days later, the navy demolished the chapel. Protesters illegally occupied restricted areas, including Flamingo Beach, remaining there for several weeks.
Those who needed new homes squatted on Navy land, which was also used in the creation of sports areas and graveyards. In , all political parties in Puerto Rico called for the US Navy to cease operations and leave the island. Finally, in , President Nixon ordered the Navy to leave the island, which they did in December In short, civil disobedience can range from sit-ins, to protests, to marches.
Civil disobedience is a tool often used by disenfranchised and downtrodden citizens to usher change from their governments in regard to laws or systems they see as unjust. It allows the citizens of a nation to bring about necessary change in their country without violence.
Civil disobedience has proven time and again to be an effective tool in ushering in change throughout history and even today. Yeah, I understand why they want to protest and make themselves heard, but they are doing it in an incredibly disrespectful way. By kneeling during the national anthem, the players are being very rude to all of the brave men and women who have risked their lives and died fighting for and defending America.
Throughout history, people have used political propaganda to gain support. Some have used it in the positive way to promote great things. Others unfortunately used it in a negative way and abused it. In addition, the consequences of that behavior was never forgotten. In order to be successful in using the propaganda, one must begin by using it in a positive way in order to appeal to the masses of people to gain their support.
During his acceptance speech of the Nobel price,King has supported wholly-heartedly an inspirational theme. This essay is about to advance the idea that indeed purity of heart and true love are able to overpass any kind of racism and lead to a unified world.
While this may be true,still in every society there is always a group of people who is superstitious. They fear of any different situations possible to alter their life. Free speech is considered one of the essential values in the society. It protects the democratic process and ensures the diversity of thoughts and beliefs.
Numerous people and groups have continuously fight for this precious right, like the UC Davis students who faced pepper spray to protest the chancellor 's wrongful behavior. Yet in recent decades, with the increasing cases of hate speech and free speech-related crime, many wonder if free speech needs some restrictions. In early February, the huge protest in UC Berkeley against Yiannopoulos, who was accused of racism and being misogynistic, caused huge damage to the public as the protesters started to act violently to stop Yiannopoulos ' speech.
Synthesis Essay: Actions VS. Intellectual Fragility Despite the beliefs of a small minority, vaccines are good. You Might Also Like Beyond Happy Hour. Yes, You Should Delete Facebook. Here's Why. The Destructive Switch from Search to Social. Did You Enjoy This? Thank you! Your submission has been received! Comments Comments are reserved for site members only. Not a member? Sign up here.
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