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. Civil disobedience is not used to create chaos. The constitutional primacy of the legislative power is the institutional corollary of the rule of law. An aggrieved minority also has a right to take actions necessary and proper to prevent or correct governmental or societal transgressions.[REF]. 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. 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. government perpetrates or abets clear violations of natural rights, involving clear abuses and/or usurpations; the violations at issue are not isolated or exceptional but occur in a long train indicative of a design to subject their victims to absolute Despotism; the violations, persisting despite repeated petitions by the injured parties, are reasonably judged to be irremediable by any lawful measures; the violations are reasonably judged to be irremediable by any extra-lawful but non- revolutionary measures; the violations are reasonably judged to be remediable by revolutionary action. In this respect, his dissatisfaction with the half a loaf gained in previous decades applied also to his movements accomplishments, which marked, in his view, not the end of its work but only the end of the beginning, as President Lyndon Johnson said in anticipation of the Voting Rights Act.[REF]. Despite its illegality, justified civil disobedience represents one way in which good citizens can demonstrate fidelity to the principles that regulate political power, and one way in which they can try to close the gap between principle and practice in their societies. [REF], It is meaningful, if unsurprising, that the SCLC required of protesters a commitment suffused with the moral spirit of Christianity. 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. 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. [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. Critics argue that it promotes lawlessness and undermines the rule of . 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. The action in Birmingham was Kings first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. 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, A corollary of Kings earlier position that civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary is that such disobedience should cease as soon as possiblei.e., as soon as the necessary reforms are achieved or lawful, political avenues to their achievement become available. The practice of civil disobedience required a special kind of personmeaning, in most cases, a specially trained kind of person. Yet despite these shortcomings, his discussion adumbrates several regulating and confining conditions that, properly elaborated, could supply a defensible justification of the practice. All plausibly viable lawful alternatives are to be attempted prior to the adoption of extra-lawful measures, just as all plausibly viable peaceful means are to be employed prior to any recourse to violent force. 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. [We] will move on Washington, he resolved, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action . Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason. Thus originated the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail., The objection was familiar to King. On what ground could he continue in his second-phase arguments to affirm the moral imperative of nonviolence, given his justification of coercion? 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. 10. 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]. Let me explain. 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. Civil disobedience cannot be an armed struggle. Despite its shortcomings, the initial model, epitomized in Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail, was marked by a high degree of moral discipline, by professions of conscientious respect for law and for Americas founding principles, and, not by mere coincidence, a remarkable degree of success in achieving its practical objectives. 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? Kings apologetic discussion of the rioting raises troubling questions. 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. These are untenable claims. Recent protesters have been generally heedless of the obligation to compose well-reasoned, empirically careful, rights-based arguments to support the justice of their cause, and their protests have consisted largely in efforts at disruption and coercion rather than persuasion. However, none of these objections are decisive against every act of civil justification. 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. It is difficult to imagine the change they affected coming about any other way - or certainly as quickly. Like slavery in this respect, segregation violates the moral law by relegating persons to the status of things.[REF] Such practices and the positive laws that support them do violence to the divine and natural order by denying to some classes of human beings the status of full moral humanity or personhood. 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 . The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation. 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. 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. A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. A lock ( Then, the action taken has to be non-violent. In the years that followed, King would radicalize his calls for civil disobedience. I have one definition to give. 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,. [REF] Acutely aware of the turbulent history of republics,[REF] Americas revolutionary Founders hoped that Americans would prove exceptional in our lawfulness: lawful both in our obedience and, where need be, in our disobedience. Civil disobedience must convey a respect for the authority of law as an indispensable and inherently fragile instrument of human governance, no less than for the rational principles from which the law must ultimately derive. Updated: Apr 25th, 2023. The very definition of a Republic, John Adams remarked, is an Empire of Laws, and not of menwords he wrote in the spring of 1776, even as his compatriots were engaged in an armed uprising that they as a people, with Adamss own assistance, would shortly thereafter declare to be revolutionary and justified by a law higher than any human law. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.[REF]. In his first Massey Lecture, he declared: Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. [We] will move on Washington, he resolved, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action . Against his critics, King insisted that civil disobedience signifies no disrespect but, to the contrary, the highest respect for law.[REF] For King, as in the logic of the Declaration, civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary and only so far as necessary to the purpose of reforming an unjust human law. He is the author of Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) and Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism (University Press of Kansas, 2008). Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Courts decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools [o]ne may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?[REF], The objection was familiar to King. 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. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS Judged by its main objectives of reforming the law and strengthening the bonds of moral community, Kings direct-action protest movement of the 1950s and early 1960s appears to have been a resounding success. The disruption of traffic, infringing on a right of access to a public road, is in his view a permissible means of extracting a public concession to an aggrieved groups demands. Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. 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 . 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. When proponents of this lately predominant form conflate Kings two models,[REF] therefore, they undermine the justification for civil disobedience altogether. 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. Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful. 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 . A consideration of Americas first principles, as explicated in the political thought informing the American Founding, corroborates Kings view. 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. It may involve violence, but most forms of civil disobedience involve non-violent protests and actions. 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. Civil disobedience, Hugo Bedau noted, "is not just done; it is committed. Civil disobedience in a democracy is not morally justified because it poses an unacceptable threat to the rule of law. 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. Moreover, as his illustrations of unjust law make clear, it must convey a special respect for the authority of democratically enacted law. Visiting Scholar, 2016-17 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought. 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. 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. Territories Financial Support Center (TFSC), Tribal Financial Management Center (TFMC). Whatever the broader causes, the Watts riots left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. Critics had predicted that the tactics of direct action and civil disobedience would degenerate into uncivil disobedience, marked by lawlessness and violence. At least momentarily, he lost faith in the democratic processes the Voting Rights Act had newly reformed. Therefore I will keep the following ten commandments: 1. 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. 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. 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. In 2008 Greenpeace activists unleashed a banner at a political meeting which said "Stelmach: the best Premier oil money can buy" during a speech by then . Such a condition poses a clear danger to the rule of law. Here, in fuller elaboration, is the logic informing the Declarations dictates of prudence with respect to actions leading up to and including revolutionary uprising. Further, he was convinced that his direct-action movement, having suffered notable setbacks since the initial victory in Montgomery in 1956, had arrived at a crisis moment in Birmingham, such that any significant delay at that juncture would likely prove fatal to the movement as an effective force for reform. It is a powerful means of combating unjust laws, and freeing society from oppressive restrictions. This point concerning the regulation of civil disobedience by the dictates of prudence yields a vitally important corollary: Acts of civil disobedience are not necessarily revolutionary actions and do not necessarily rest on premises that justify revolutionary action. Here, for King, are the primary and overarching conditions of morally sound protest: As a subclass of nonviolent protest, civil disobedience in Kings understanding is marked by: 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. 8. He offered a second illustration in the form of a direct suggestion. 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.
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