Civil disobedience So far we have looked at justifications for punishing law-breakers. The grounds for punishing them were moral ones. But could it ever be morally acceptable to break a law? In this section I look at a particular kind of law-breaking which is justified on moral grounds: civil disobedience. Some people argue that law-breaking can never be justified: if you are dissatisfied with the law you should try to get it changed through legal channels such as campaigning, letter-writing, and so on. But there are many cases when such legal protest is completely useless. There is a tradition of breaking the law in such circumstances known as civil disobedience. The occasion for civil disobedience arises when people find that they are being asked to obey laws or government policies which they consider to be unjust. Civil disobedience has brought about important changes in law and government policy. A famous example is the suffragette movement in Britain, which managed to publicise its aim of getting votes for women through a campaign of public civil disobedience which included protesters chaining themselves to railings. Limited emancipation was finally achieved in 1918, when women over the age of thirty were permitted to vote in elections, and was partly due to the social impact of the First World War. Nevertheless the suffragette movement had a significant role to play in changing the unjust law which prevented women from participating in supposedly democratic elections. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were both passionate advocates of civil disobedience. Gandhi was hugely influential in promoting Indian independence by means of non-violent illegal protest, which eventually led to the withdrawal of the British Raj; Martin Luther King’s defiance of racial prejudice by similar methods helped to guarantee basic civil rights for black Americans in the southern states of America. Another example of civil disobedience is provided by some Americans’ refusal to fight in the Vietnam War, despite being called up by their government. Some did this on the grounds that they believed any killing to be morally wrong, and so thought it more important to break the law than to fight and possibly kill other human beings. Others did not object to all wars but felt that the war in Vietnam was an unjust war which put civilians at immense risk for no good reason. The extent of opposition to the war in Vietnam eventually led to the United States’ withdrawal. Public law-breaking undoubtedly fuelled this opposition. The tradition of civil disobedience is one of non-violent, public law-breaking designed to bring attention to unjust laws or government policies. Those who act within this tradition of civil disobedience do not break the law simply for personal gain; they do it in order to draw attention to an unjust law or morally objectionable government policy, and to maximize publicity for their cause. This is why it usually takes place in public, preferably in the presence of journalists, photographers and television cameras. For instance, an American conscript who threw away his draft card during the Vietnam War, and then hid from the army simply because he was scared of fighting and didn’t want to die, would not be performing an act of civil disobedience. It would be an act of self-preservation. If he acted in the same way, not from fear for his personal safety, but on moral grounds, yet did this secretly, not making his case public in any way, then it still would not qualify as an act of civil disobedience. In contrast, another conscript who burnt his draft card in public, while being filmed for television and making a statement about why he thought American involvement in Vietnam immoral, would be engaging in civil disobedience. The aim of civil disobedience is ultimately to change particular laws or government policies, not to undermine the rule of law completely. Those who act within the tradition of civil disobedience usually avoid any kind of violence, not only because it can undermine their cause by encouraging retaliation and thus an escalation of conflict, but primarily because their justification for law-breaking is on moral grounds, and most moral principles only permit harm to other people in extreme situations such as if you are attacked and need to defend yourself. Terrorists, or freedom fighters (which you call them depends on how sympathetic you are to their aims), use acts of violence for political ends. Like those who engage in acts of civil disobedience, they want to change the e3xisting state of affairs, not for private gain, but for the general good as they see it. Where they differ is in the methods they are prepared to use to bring about this change. Criticisms of civil disobedience Undemocratic Assuming that civil disobedience takes place in some kind of democracy, it can appear to be undemocratic. If a majority of democratically elected representatives vote that a particular law should be created, or a government policy put into practice, then to break the law as a protest against this seems to go against the spirit of democracy, particularly if a very small minority of citizens are involved in the act of civil disobedience. Surely the fact that everyone is likely to find some government policies disagreeable is just the price to pay for living in a democratic state. If civil disobedience by a minority is effective, then that seems to give the few power to overturn the majority view. This seems profoundly anti-democratic. Yet if civil disobedience isn’t effective, there seems little point in undertaking it. So, on this view, civil disobedience is either undemocratic or else pointless. Against this, it is important to realize that acts of civil disobedience are intended to highlight morally unacceptable government decisions or practices. For instance, the Civil Rights movement in America in the 1960s, through well-publicised demonstrations in defiance of legally enforced racial segregation, gave worldwide publicity to the unfair treatment of black Americans. Understood in this way, civil disobedience is a technique for getting the majority or their representatives to reconsider their position on a particular issue, rather than an undemocratic way of getting law or policy changed. Slippery slope to lawlessness Another objection to civil disobedience is that it encourages law-breaking, which could in the long term undermine the power of government and the rule of law, and that this risk far outweighs any possible benefits that might arise from it. Once respect for the law is undermined, even if on moral grounds, the danger is that general lawlessness will follow. This is a slippery slope argument, an argument which suggests that if you take one step in a particular direction, you won’t be able to stop a process which will result in an obviously unattractive result. Just as when you take one step down a slippery slope, it is almost impossible to stop until you reach the bottom, so, some people claim, if you make some minor kinds of law-breaking acceptable then there will be no stopping until no one respects the law any longer. However, this sort of argument can make the end result seem inevitable when it is not. There is no reason to believe the claim that acts of civil disobedience will undermine respect for the law, or, to continue the metaphor of the slippery slope, there is no reason to believe that we can’t dig our heels in at a certain point and say ‘Here and no further.’ Indeed, some advocates of civil disobedience argue that, far from undermining the rule of law, what they do indicates deep respect for the law. If someone is prepared to be punished by the state for drawing attention to what they believe to be an unjust law, this shows that they are committed to the general position that laws should be just and that just laws should be respected. This is very different from breaking a law for personal gain. (Source: Nigel Warburton (1995): Philosophy: The Basics. P.83-86. Routledge)
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:00:17 +0000
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