Civil disobedience, Hugo Bedau noted, "is not just done; it is committed. Above all, because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. 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. Such a condition poses a clear danger to the rule of law. 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.. Aspects of civil disobedience. He was less successful, however, in clarifying the ideas of personhood and equality that were to supply the basis and the limiting principle for claims of rights and of rights violations. [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. They included the Protestant theology of personalism that he had studied as a graduate student. Beyond such simple formulations, King took seriously the objections Kilpatrick, the clergymen, and others raised. 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. However, when a human law directs action that flatly contradicts God's commands, Aquinas says that not only is disobedience morally permissible, it is morally required. Mindful of the same socioeconomic conditions that alarmed King, Bayard Rustin (Kings longtime adviser and perhaps the movements shrewdest tactician and organizer) called for activism within the regular democratic processes of petition, electoral persuasion, and voting; he endorsed a strategic turn toward political action and a temporary curtailment of mass demonstrations.[REF] By failing to heed Rustins advice, King departed from his previously stated principles regarding civil disobedience. 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 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. Civil disobedience is variously described as an act by which "one addresses the sense of justice of the majority of the community" (Rawls 1999, 320), as "a plea for reconsideration" (Singer 1973, 84-92), and as a "symbolic appeal to the capacity for reason and sense of justice of the majority" (Habermas 1985, 99). 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. 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. 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. one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end. He announced the advent of a second phase, targeting conditions in impoverished urban ghettoes across the country and aiming at the realization of [socioeconomic] equality across lines of class and color. The former described the practice of rabid segregationist[s], while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the larger society, but not wantonly destructive.[REF]. Americans trust in government has fallen to historic lows as our partisan divisions and animosities have intensified;[REF] large and increasing numbers of Americans are convinced, for one set of reasons or another, of the illegitimacy of the ruling order. For his own, very different reasons, King, too, judged the first phase of his movement as only a partial and mixed success. The epistemic situation of the would-be defiant is more difficult. King called this modified conception a more mature form of civil disobedience. Is Teen Depression Epidemic Result of Too Much Social Media, Too Little Religion? 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]. Of this venerable right, the practice of civil disobedience is extolled by its proponents as an ingeniously conceived varianta finely calibrated method of protest, at once safe and effectivenot so radical as needlessly to unsettle an established order and just radical enough to remediate governmental or societal injustices. Again, the justification of civil disobedience in this kind of case depends on the particulars. 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. In the definition cited above, the general objective of civil disobedience, to effect a change in laws or government policies, encompasses a variety of possible specific objectives, ranging from reform of particular laws or policies to fundamental change in constitutional order. Two years later, a riot in Detroit wrought even greater destruction.[REF]. " is the official definition from the Britannica Encyclopedia. Civil disobedience is often characterized as a conscientious act of illegal protest that people engage in to communicate their opposition to law or government policy. Kings later idea of civil disobedience is properly if bluntly characterized as a form of extortion clothed in moral purposes. It is the non-violent, noncompliance with unjust laws that is ordered towards changing the laws. That earlier argument, the argument presented in the Letter, conforms for the most part with the closely circumscribed idea of civil disobedience supported by the Founders understanding of natural rights and the rule of law. Kings distinction between disobedience that is evasive or defiant and disobedience marked by acceptance of the authority of law is vividly meaningful in context. There is, consequently, no moral obligation to obey them. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health. 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. The orthodox definition of civil disobedience notes that civil disobedience is both illegal and civil, takes place in public, involves an act of protest, is nonviolent, is conscientiously-motivated, and involves both acceptance of the legitimacy of the system and submission to arrest and punishment. 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]. 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. This means that the practitioner of civil disobedience must judge properly in identifying unjust laws as the justification for disobedience. 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. A Debate About Whether or Not Civil Disobedience Is Justified and Under What Circumstances . How, for instance, are we to know that protestors claims of injustice are valid and the changes they demand are salutary? 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 who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.[REF]. 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. 5. At least momentarily, he lost faith in the democratic processes the Voting Rights Act had newly reformed. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. [REF] If we obey this injunction, he concluded, we are out of business.[REF]. 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. That civil disobedience may be practiced only for the right reasons is first and fundamental among the regulating conditions King suggested. 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 Problem of Civil Disobedience Subject: Politics & Government Study Level: College Words: 1375. [REF] For the same reason, they are to embody the greatest respect for man-made positive laws that circumstances permit. Kings apologetic discussion of the rioting raises troubling questions. However paradoxical it might appear, Americas founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. His first illustration was offered as a hypothetical, though it has since become a common method in actual protests. It may involve violence, but most forms of civil disobedience involve non-violent protests and actions. Its primary finding may be summarized in this lesson: Civil disobedience is justifiable but dangerous. His disobedience shows a distrust for the democratic system. 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. 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. 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. First, the law has to be unjust and that has to be demonstrated. 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. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the larger society, but not wantonly destructive. To hasten the achievement of his second-phase objectives, King renewed and intensified his call for civil disobedience. In the wake of SARS and H1N1, . 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 . In the years that followed, King would radicalize his calls for civil disobedience. [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. The Right Spirit. 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. Civil Disobedience and Americas First Principles. 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. 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. 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. As the Declaration makes clear, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution. 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. Defending human rights in peaceful ways outside "the law" is ultimately a form of defense of and respect for the law. 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. 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. 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. a conscientious refusal to submit to a law deemed unjust; a respectful acceptance of the legal consequences (typically jailing) of ones action; and. 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. A delegation of poor people can walk into a high officials office with a carefully, collectively prepared list of demands. Complications arise foremost from the fact that King did not hold a unitary and coherent position on civil disobedience. 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. In a democracy, minority groups have basic rights and alternatives to civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger society; there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point Mass civil disobedience as a new stage of struggle can transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force. 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. 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. On what ground could he locate the natural rights of persons, given his denigration of the property righta right affirmed in classical natural-rights philosophy as a direct corollary of the liberty of the person? Those victories included: So far as it was taken not as a last resort but, to the contrary, amid a period of accumulating successes for the equal-rights cause achieved by scrupulously lawful means, Kings decision to practice civil disobedience in Birmingham appears precipitant, unwarranted by his own criterion of justification. Whether dissension prefer one run of protest to another depends upon the particular historical . There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham, King reported, than in any other city in the nation. In response, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason. His first illustration was offered as a hypothetical, though it has since become a common method in actual protests. LockA locked padlock 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. The discussion that follows is meant to provide such a reconsideration. 3. Yet even Kings earlier argument conforms only imperfectly with the Founders principles, and the manner in which it departs from them prefigures his excesses in his later phase. Rawls thus limits justified civil disobedience to cases where a democratic majority has implemented a law that violates a basic liberty right and thus oversteps its authority. The philosopher and sociologist Jrgen Habermas defined civil disobedience as follows: "Civil disobedience is moral justified Protest, which should not only be based on private beliefs or personal interests; he is a more public Act that is usually announced and the course of which can be calculated by the police; he closes the intentional Injury individual . 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. Americas founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. Rawls indicates that to be completely open and nonviolent manifests one's sincerity, honesty, and the depth of commitment . Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. Most worrisome in the recent waves of purportedly civil disobedience is their participants disregard for the divided legacy of the Civil Rights movement. 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. Moreover, the most prominent eruptions in the past decade of what supporters persist in calling civil disobedience, including the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the anti-Trump Resistance,. Kings illustrations of the sort of actions he envisioned are useful in clarifying the distinction. The orthodox definition of civil disobedience notes that civil disobedience is both illegal and civil, takes place in public, involves an act of protest, is nonviolent, is conscientiously-motivated, and involves both acceptance of the legitimacy of the system and submission to arrest and punishment. Even where it proves necessary to disobey an unjust law, to disobey the law in its entirety may be unnecessary to the purpose of reformand indeed may conflict with that purpose. Thus, civil disobedience may be morally justified, even in a democracy. 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. Even during the civil rights movement, led by the nonviolent southern preacher, hundreds were injured and killed during these "nonviolent" protests. 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. Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful. We should explore legal channels first. 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]. Like Gandhi, King believed that citizens have a duty to engage in . An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice. 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. 10. He reiterated his calls for nonviolent action, including civil disobedience, but this time in a significantly modified form. A consideration of Americas first principles, as explicated in the political thought informing the American Founding, corroborates Kings view. 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. Civil disobedience in a democracy is not morally justified because it poses an unacceptable threat to the rule of law. Civil disobedience cannot be an armed struggle. Dissatisfied with Johnsons War on Poverty, King called for a multifaceted real war on poverty designed to provide jobs, income, and housing for all in need of them: in sum, a new economic deal for the poor, consisting in a massive, new national program.[REF]. 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."4 The. It involves people coming together to stand against its government or any oppressor, to protest vocally and using all mediums available but without any physical force or violence. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, feels obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. 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. 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. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world. It is plainly at odds with his insistence on the correspondence of moral ends and moral means. The Right People. 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]. 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. By this means, his admirers might plausibly argue, King acknowledged the seriousness of critics major concern and effectively addressed it. Its aim is to make that society more just, and justice is a stabilizing influence. Attempts to emulate those methods have naturally followed, and the multiplication of such attempts must heighten the likelihood of a corrosive effect on the publics attachment to law. Gandhi, a "central figure in the relationship of Congress and the Raj" was able to awaken Indians into political movements. 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. But, if one person can create change that gives them more power than others. 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. In a general sense, Kings conformity with this precept in the first phase of his activism appears, despite his sometimes eager usage of the language of revolution, in his scrupulous expressions of respect for the principles and institutions established by the American Founders. In the Declaration of Independence, the ultimate recourse is a right, again where circumstances dictate, to full-blown revolution: Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [its proper] ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government., Further, it should be clear that the imperative subjection to the rule of law applies no less to the people themselves, as represented by a ruling majority, than to government. Updated: Apr 25th, 2023. However, none of these objections are decisive against every act of civil justification. The latter sort of action is unintelligible as a claim upon conscience. He offered a second illustration in the form of a direct suggestion. In a 1960 televised debate with King, the segregationist James J. Kilpatrick, editor of the, 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. 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. 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.