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
The right to political participation must include a right to continue to contest the result after the votes are counted or the decisions taken.
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
When an individual uses political participation rights to justify civil disobedience, they are not automatically criticizing the law itself for making their action illegal.
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
In a liberal state, the right to political activity is adequately protected by law, and the right to political participation cannot ground a right to civil disobedience.
members of the illiberal state do have a right to civil disobedience which is roughly that part of their moral right to political participation which is not recognized in law
People living under an illiberal government possess a legitimate moral claim to engage in civil disobedience, which stems directly from the unfulfilled or unprotected parts of their fundamental moral right to take part in politics that the legal system fails to accommodate.
Raz places great emphasis on the kind of regime in which a disobedient acts, arguing that only in an illiberal regime could individuals have a right to civil disobedience to reclaim their political participation rights which their illiberal state is violating: they are entitled to “disregard the offending laws and exercise their moral right as if it were recognized by law.”
Raz argues that the legitimacy of civil disobedience depends entirely on the type of government in power. He contends that a right to civil disobedience only exists within an illiberal regime, where citizens must act to reclaim the political participation rights stripped from them by the state. In these oppressive environments, individuals are justified in ignoring unjust laws and exercising their fundamental moral rights as though the law actually protected them.
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.
Raz claimed that the right to civil disobedience would be used even when people should choose not to use it.
The fundamental purpose of personal conduct rights is to grant individuals a protected boundary within which they are free to make either moral or immoral choices.
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
Dealing with principled offenders, utilitarian arguments for punishment must be balanced against the defendant's deeply held convictions, with the scale typically tipping toward leniency.
Dworkin does not defend agents’ moral duty to accept punishment (1985, 114–5). He considers non-evasion of legal sanctions to be a good strategy for civil disobedients denouncing unconstitutional law and unjust policy (justice- and policy-based civil disobedience on his view) but denies that accepting punishment is a conceptual, moral, or tactical requirement for civil disobedience motivated by personal convictions (‘integrity-based’ civil disobedience). 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.
Ronald Dworkin argues that civil disobedients do not have a moral obligation to accept legal punishment. While he views submitting to legal sanctions as an effective strategy for those protesting unjust policies or unconstitutional laws, he does not see it as a requirement for everyone.
Specifically, for individuals driven by personal conviction—what he terms "integrity-based" civil disobedience—accepting punishment is neither a conceptual necessity, a moral duty, nor a tactical requirement.
The right to conscience, on this account, thus grounds a weak “right to break the law”. It is a right in the sense that one “does the right thing to break the law, so that we should all respect” the agent when she follows her conscientious judgment about doubtful law and refuses to comply with a law that requires her to do what her conscience forbids (Dworkin 1978, 228–37), but it does not ground a right in the strong sense that the government would do wrong to stop her from disobeying.
According to this view, the right to conscience establishes a limited or weak right to violate the law. It is considered a right because an individual is doing the morally correct thing by breaking a law that directly contradicts their deeply held moral beliefs.
Consequently, society should respect an individual who chooses to follow their own moral judgment over an ambiguous or objectionable law. However, this does not grant a strong right in the sense that it would be inherently wrong or unjust for the government to step in and enforce compliance or prevent the disobedience.
concord under conditions of pluralism
What do the words concord and pluralism means in this text?
For years, Thoreau refused to pay his state poll tax as a protest against the institution of slavery, the extermination of Native Americans, and the war against Mexico. When a Concord, Massachusetts, constable named Sam Staples asked Thoreau to pay his back taxes in 1846 and Thoreau refused, Staples escorted him to jail. In a public lecture that Thoreau gave twice in 1848, he justified his tax refusal as a way to withdraw cooperation with the government and he called on his fellow townspeople to do the same.
Thoreau first practiced "civil disobedience" when he refused to pay his taxes in because he didn't like the government in favor of Slavery, and other things he was against with. It caused him jail time as a result
So he made a book titled "Resistance to Civil Government" (simply "Civil Disobedience" as of today) to encourage civilians to learn more between themselves and the government.
civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies (Rawls 1999, 320). On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience operate at the boundary of fidelity to law, have general respect for their regime, and are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as evidence of their fidelity to the rule of law
Civil disobedience is considerable a non-violent way to bring change to laws and government policies.
It involves between people doing the disobeying the laws and those who are joining and sympathizing the movement.
It appeals to one sense of justice. They join these movements in passion by breaking the law.
From the Boston Tea Party to Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March, and from suffragists’ illegally casting their ballots to whites-only lunch counter sit-ins, civil disobedience has often played a crucial role in bending the proverbial arc of the moral universe toward justice
What do the Boston Tea Party, Gandhi's Salt March, and Illegal ballot Casting in segregated sit-in have in common in terms of civil disobedience?