Novice LD Champions

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Copyright 2013 by Champion Briefs, LLC
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Table&of&Contents&& & Novice&Topic&2013&
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Table&of&Contents&
The Evidence Standard _________________________________________ 3

Topic Analyses _______________________________________________ 11
Topic Analysis by Brian Hodge ______________________________________ 12
Topic Analysis by Jack Ave _________________________________________ 22
Cards for the Affirmative ______________________________________ 30
Key to Democracy __________________________________________________ 31
Punishment for a Civil Disobedient in a Democracy Must be Justifiable ____ 31
Civil Disobedience is Justified in Contemporary and Imperfect
Democracies _____________________________________________________ 32
Civil Disobedience Prevents Democracies from Falling into
Authoritarianism _________________________________________________ 33
In a Moral Democracy, the Tyranny of the Majority is Restricted _________ 34
Misrepresentation Leads to a Democratic Deficit. _____________________ 35
Civil Disobedience is Even Justified Under Majority Rule _______________ 36
Civil Disobedience is Key to Establishing Strong, Lasting Democracies ____ 37
Civil Disobedience Operates as a Safety Valve for Democracy and
Checks Abuse ____________________________________________________ 38
Punishing the Disobedient is Harmful to Democracy ____________________ 39
A Democracy has to Tolerate Civil Disobedience _______________________ 40
Civil Disobedience Does Not Violate the Principle of Majority Rule _______ 41
Arguments About Majority Rules Are Not Valid in a Democracy ________ 42
Disobedience Is Consistent with Democratic Values_____________________ 43
A Civilian Must be Disobedient if There is an Imperfect Democracy _______ 44
Disobedience is Necessary in a Democracy ____________________________ 45
True Democracy Allows Room for Significant Changes Aimed at
Increasing Equality _______________________________________________ 46
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Civil Disobedience in a Democracy Carries a Taint of Autocracy, becomes
Countermajorian _________________________________________________ 47
Civil Disobedience Acts to Correct Problems in the Democratic System ____ 48
The Liberal View Of Democracy is a Bad Representation of Democracys
True Tenants _____________________________________________________ 49
Civil Disobedience Against Policies That Lack True Democratic Backing is
Justified _________________________________________________________ 50
As Democracies Become More Complex, the Need for Legitimate Civil
Disobedience Is Grows _____________________________________________ 51
Good for the Law ____________________________________________ 52
Civil Disobedience can be Justified Under Law ________________________ 52
There is a Difference Between Civil Disobedience and Common Crime ____ 53
When the Laws of an Imperfect Democracy Clash With an Ideal
Democracy, There is No Obligation to Follow Those Rules _______________ 54
Civil Disobedience Exposes Injustices That Need to be Addressed _________ 55
Citizens Have the Responsibility to Follow the Law Or Engage in
Disobedience _____________________________________________________ 56
Political Disobedience Has the Power to Abolish Unjust Laws and Promote
Equality _________________________________________________________ 57
Civil Disobedience is Crucial to the Effectiveness of the Political System ___ 58
True Forms of Civil Disobedience Are Justified. Civil Disobedience is
Defined as a Political Protest Over an Unjust Law Or Policy _____________ 59
Positive Societal Impacts ______________________________________ 60
Civil Disobedience is Used to Solve Environmental Problems in the Status
Quo _____________________________________________________________ 60
Adhering to Rule of Law Favors the Rich and Powerful and Disregards the
Poor ____________________________________________________________ 61
Civil Disobedience Does Not Result in a Slippery Slope or Total Anarchy __ 62
Civil Disobedience Protects Human Dignity ___________________________ 63
Most Cases of Civil Disobedience Are Justified Under a Consequential
Framework ______________________________________________________ 64
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Civil Disobedience Allows Citizens to Engage in the Most Inclusive Forms
of Collective Action________________________________________________ 65
In the Era of Globalization, Civil Disobedience is Becoming More
Important _______________________________________________________ 66
Civil Disobedience Has the Power to Shed Light on Various Atrocities _____ 67
Effective Civil Disobedience Can Revitalize the Public Sphere ____________ 68
In a Democratic System, Civil Disobedience Will Not Result in Instability __ 69
Necessary for Political Change _________________________________ 70
Civil Disobedience Promotes Political Participation, Which is Key to a
Democracy _______________________________________________________ 70
Civil disobedience empowers Oppressed Minorities _____________________ 71
The Suffrage of the Civil Disobedient is Key to Gaining Support __________ 72
Even if Civil Disobedience Fails, it is Necessary for Social Change ________ 73
Nonviolent Challenges to Power Can Act as Effective Political
Communication___________________________________________________ 74
Nonviolent Civil Disobedience is Justified as a Form of Speech That
Creates Public Discussion __________________________________________ 75
Civil Disobedience Consists of Deliberate Disobedience for the Purpose of
Creating Change __________________________________________________ 76
An Acceptance of Arrest by Individuals Practicing Civil Disobedience is
Acceptance of the Dominant Paradigm and Prevents Radical Social
Change __________________________________________________________ 77
Modern Civil Disobedience Transcends the Liberal Model and Focuses on
Instances of Illegitimate Political Authority ___________________________ 78
Morally Permissible __________________________________________ 80
Citizens Have a Moral Right to Engage in Civil Disobedience, Even if Such
Acts Ultimately Fail _______________________________________________ 80
The Moral Right to Political Participation Guarantees Citizens the Right
to Change Policy Through Disobedience ______________________________ 81
A Moral Right to Civil Disobedience Allows Citizens to Correct for
Instances of Inequality _____________________________________________ 83
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Moral Forms of Civil Disobedience Require Some Limits and
Compromises Concerning the Legal System ___________________________ 84
An Endorsement of Civil Disobedience Does Not Downgrade the
Importance of Moral Truth _________________________________________ 85
Civil Disobedience Does Not Require Moral Obligation Because There is
No Moral Obligation to Obey the Law ________________________________ 86
If Laws Are Unjust, Individuals Engaging in Civil Disobedience Require
No Justification ___________________________________________________ 87
Moral Justification is Not Required When Laws Reflect a Systemic Deficit
in Democracy ____________________________________________________ 88
Civil Disobedience Forces Onlookers to Consider the Morality Behind
Actions __________________________________________________________ 89
It is Morally Necessary to End an Unjust Law, Especially if Such a Law
Exists in an Unideal Democracy _____________________________________ 90
Differs from Other Types of Action ______________________________ 92
Simple Protest Does Not Meet the Standards for Civil Disobedience _______ 92
Civil Disobedience is Different Than Rebellion _________________________ 93
There is an Important Difference Between Civil Disobedience and
Terrorism _______________________________________________________ 94
Political Participation Negates the Right to Civil Disobedience ___________ 95
Legitimate Forms of Civil Disobedience Can Include Violence ____________ 96
There Is A Clear Delineation Between Civil Disobedience Acts That
Incorporate Violence And Terrorism _________________________________ 98
True Civil Disobedience Must Be Nonviolent, With Minimal Amounts Of
Force ___________________________________________________________ 99
Successful Action ___________________________________________ 100
Definition of Civil Disobedience ____________________________________ 100
Civil Disobedience Has Been Traced As Far Back As Ancient Greece _____ 101
Civil Disobedience is Viewed in Two Different Ways Historically ________ 102
There Are Two Flaws to Conventional Definitions of Civil Disobedience __ 103
The History Of Civil Disobedience __________________________________ 104
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The History Of Gandhian Civil Disobedience _________________________ 105
The History Of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Disobedience _________ 106
Cards for the Negative___________________________________ 107

Rule of Law is Necessary _____________________________________ 108
Rule of Law is Necessary to Protect From Violence, Avoid Biased
Judgment, and Allow for Universal Rule _____________________________ 108
Rule of Law Protects Minorities ____________________________________ 109
The Rule of Law is Necessary for a Just Society _______________________ 110
The Rule of Law is Key to Preserving Civil Rights _____________________ 111
Rule of Law Prevents the Biased Nature of A Single Voice That the
Mindset Of Civil Disobedience Empowers ____________________________ 112
Civil Disobedience is Defined as Selective and Public Performance of
Actions Truly Believed To Be Illegal ________________________________ 113
An Individual Engaging in Civil Disobedience Must Accept Legal
Repercussions For His Actions _____________________________________ 115
Civil Disobedience is an Illegal Act Undertaken For a Moral Reason. It
Must Also Attempt to Change a Law ________________________________ 116
Civil Disobedience That Disregards the Rule of Law Cause Chaos _______ 117
Civil Disobedience is Not Compatible With The U.S. System of Law ______ 118
The Federal System of the United States Requires Obedience to the Law,
Regardless Of Circumstances ______________________________________ 119
The Rule of Law Includes Primary and Secondary Rules of Obligation.
Civilly Disobedient Acts That Break Either Are Problematic ____________ 120
Civil Disobedience is Less Extreme than Revolution but Falls Outside of
The Confines of The Law __________________________________________ 122
Rawls' Idea of Civil Disobedience is Extremely Complex And Hard To
Apply in Different Political Standings _______________________________ 123
Rawls' Theory Would Rule Out Civil Rights Activists Because of Their
Minimal Use of Violence __________________________________________ 124
Even Actions That Fall Outside Of Rawls' Paradigm May Be Unjustified _ 126
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Citizens Have a Moral Duty to Follow the Law _______________________ 127
The American Political System Has Changed To Accommodate Social
Trends, Indicating That Working Through the System Can Be Effective __ 128
Rawls' Theory of Natural Justice Requires Obedience to the Law, Even If
the Laws Are Unjust______________________________________________ 129
Rawl's Theory on Civil Disobedience Has Widespread Flaws. Violent Acts
Are Antithetical to the Political System ______________________________ 130
Rawls' Arguments Fails to Take into Account Partial State Legitimacy
Which Makes it Impossible to Follow________________________________ 132
Rule of Law is Necessary _____________________________________ 134
There is No Logical Right to Civil Disobedience _______________________ 134
A Legal Right to Civil Disobedience Cannot Exist. Civil Disobedience is an
Illegal Action ____________________________________________________ 135
To Recognize a Right to Civil Disobedience Would Make Moral
Considerations Irrelevant _________________________________________ 136
There is No Justifiable Reason to Recognize a Right to Civil Disobedience _ 137
True Civil Disobedience Requires That All Legal Forms Of Dissent Be
Exhausted First __________________________________________________ 138
Citizens Pondering Civil Disobedience Are Required To Engage In Other
Forms Of The Political Process First ________________________________ 139
A Failure To Try Other Action First Is Morally Reprehensible __________ 140
If Citizens Receive Goods From The State, They Are Morally Required To
Comply With The Laws And Demands Of That State __________________ 141
We Are Obligated to Support the Institution of Government as Long as
They Are Just Institutions That Carry Out The Public Will _____________ 142
The State is a Reflection of The Political Will of Its Citizens. Therefore,
Citizens Have A Duty To Comply With Its Law _______________________ 143
The United States is Not Obligated to Condone Civil Disobedience Under
the Constitution _________________________________________________ 144
Civil Disobedience Represents a Problem to the U.S. Federal System _____ 145
Civil Disobedience Implicitly Indicates That There is a Problem in Society 146
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Civil Disobedience is Not Protected Under the First Amendment_________ 147
Civil Disobedience is Impossible to Define ____________________________ 148
Civil Disobedience Requires a Violation of The Government Policy, As
Well As Valid Law And Order _____________________________________ 149
Even if Civil Disobedient Acts Are Nonviolent, They Put the Protester in a
State of War ____________________________________________________ 150
Civil Disobedience Requires That All Other Forms of Political Action
Have Already Been Tried _________________________________________ 151
Civil Disobedience Often Verges on Violence and Creates the Impetus for
Future Violent Acts ______________________________________________ 152
A Justification of Civil Disobedience Opens Pandora's Box And Incites
Mass Chaos _____________________________________________________ 153
Harms to Democratic Values __________________________________ 154
Civil Disobedience is Inconsistent with Democratic Values ______________ 154
Civil Disobedience is Not Justified if Citizens Have the Right to
Participation ____________________________________________________ 155
Compulsory Voting is Completely Unjustifiable in a Democracy _________ 156
Civil Disobedience Threatens The Efficacy And Stability Of A Democracy 157
Absolving Ourselves of the Obligation to the State Should Be Difficult To
Do And Should Only be a Last Resort _______________________________ 158
We Are Obligated To Follow The Laws Of A State If They Provide Rights 159
Social Dislocation is a More Effective Means of Creating Social Change___ 160
It Is Impossible For Individuals To Effectively Protest The Government
While Supporting The Government _________________________________ 162
Harms to Democratic Values __________________________________ 163
Acts Of Historical "Civil Disobedience," Like the Montgomery Bus
Boycott Are Not True Civil Disobedience ____________________________ 163
Achieving Righteous Civil Disobedience is Impossible __________________ 164
Instances of Delayed Justice Are Not a Reason to Use Civil Disobedience __ 165
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Topic&Analysis&by&Brian&Hodge& Novice&Topic&2013&
Topic Analysis by Brian Hodge
Introduction
At the beginning of the 2013/2014 season, the NFL designated a specific novice topic,
recommended for use in novice divisions around the country during September and October in
place of the standard LD topic. Its been implied that the chosen topic will remain the same for at
least several years; this consistency and permanency puts us in a unique educational situation.
Topic analyses like this one normally aim to impart a satisfactory understanding of the topic
upon its readers. While I will certainly endeavor to do that here, I have another goal in mind as
well: Id like to use the proposed novice topic as a template for how to break down debate
resolutions in an understandable and easily digestible way. The benefits of such a skill to any
debater should be obvious given a solid, analytical understanding of the resolution, youll be
infinitely better equipped to better understand your case and better refute your opponents
arguments. Additionally, it should be a goal for any novice to develop their analytical and
deductive skills after all, doing prep work and writing positions is a big part of being a
successful debater; its the foundation of that process that Im going to attempt to impart here.
Id also like to offer a warning of sorts - one that is attached, in some form or another, to
every topic analysis I write. There is an understandable tendency to take the things written in
topic analyses like this one and consider them the be-all end-all of thought about the topic. While
I stand behind the ideas that I offer here, and while they do constitute my most presently
thoughtful reading of the topic, they should not be taken as a definitive explication of the topics
meaning. Not only because my opinion is only one of many, but also because recycling and
regurgitating the thoughts of another is not in any way a sufficient substitute for original
thoughts of your own. My goal here is to stimulate thought and model analytical thinking, and
that means that in addition to reading this topic analysis, those of you who get the most out of it
will need to go the extra step and employ the methods I explain here to your own ends. Im
trying to give you the tools to break down and understand debate resolutions, not just the diced
up versions of the resolution itself.
Resolutional Analysis 101
The first question to ask is, What exactly are we doing when breaking down a
resolution? This question, implicitly, necessitates an understanding of what exactly the
resolution itself is. Resolutions are truth statements, and our goal as debaters is to prove those
truth statements to be either true or false. Now, some of you may have heard the phrase truth-
testing before. If so, its important to note that the view Im explicating here does not
necessitate and is not the same as the paradigm of truth-testing. All debaters are truth-testers
in the general sense the difference is that some people claim that the truth of the resolution is
determined in a particular way, i.e. through utilitarianism or policymaking. While these people
may not refer to themselves as truth-testers (due to some of the paradigmatic baggage attached
to that particular label), they are still most definitely consistent with the interpretation that Ive
described here so far.
If most of that previous paragraph didnt make sense to you, thats also completely fine.
My goal is just to ensure that silly procedural things like debate-specific jargon dont interfere
with having a sufficient understanding of the way that we, as debaters, understand the topics
were debating.
So then, as debaters, what concerns us is the specific way in which we determine the truth
or falsity of the resolution. Determining this method is of clear importance, as being aware of the
specific metric of the truth of the resolution better enables us to demonstrate our consistency
with that metric in other words, it gives us the tools necessary to win rounds. Here, Ill discuss
a specific method of interpreting resolutional statements that has to do with extracting truth
values from the resolution.
I think this process is best illustrated with an example. Take the statement, That man has
a brown beard. First of all, its important to note that this statement is descriptive. That is to say,
the statement has to do with facts about the world, and things that are factually verifiable.
Descriptive statements make claims about what is. But how do we determine the truth or falsity
of such a statement? Well, there are a number of things that need to be proven to be true for the
statement as a whole to be true:
1) That the phrase that man refers to a certain individual,

2) That the individual in question is in fact a man,
3) That the man in question has a beard, and
4) That the beard in question is in fact brown.
Youll notice that Ive put certain parts of the indicated phrase in quotation marks this
is to indicate that these are concepts that need to be explicated and explored. There need to be
standards put in place for what constitutes each of these concepts this may at first seem trivial
or nitpicky, but that kind of belief opens the door for indeterminate and incomplete
understandings of the statement itself. For example, if we dont know exactly what constitutes a
beard, at least for our purposes, then what shall we do if the man in question has a brown
moustache or goatee? In such a situation, how do we make a determination regarding the truth or
falsity of the statement itself? Its because of the possibility of this kind of indeterminacy that a
steadfast and thorough explication of the words in the topic is incredibly important.
More importantly, however how do we translate these truth conditions into a method of
understanding the truth of the resolution? Well, to prove the resolution true, the affirmative
would need to prove that each of the four truth conditions established above are in fact the case
a task which, in itself, necessitates establishing interpretations for the various phrases Ive put
into quotation marks. Essentially, the affirmative needs to provide a holistic interpretation of the
resolution, and then demonstrate that such an interpretation renders the truth values of the
resolution to be categorically true.
If youre following along so far, you may have noticed something peculiar about this
interpretation of truth namely, that it seems far too easy to prove something false, and far too
difficult to prove it true. These are certainly legitimate concerns, especially when it comes to
something that is supposed to be competitively equitable like debate. However, Id like to
sidestep these concerns by pointing out that what Im developing here is not meant to take into
account things like fairness or education. This is not to discount the importance of those concepts
and I personally find them to be very valuable. What Im proposing here, however, is an
interpretation of truth or falsity that operates independently from such concepts. In-round,
debaters may very well claim that holding the affirmative to satisfying a number of truth
conditions is unfair, and if they win that particular debate, then theyre right, that practice is
unfair. To make those kinds of judgments out of round, however, in a way that would effect a
communal norm, seems both very difficult and very dangerous. The takeaway here is just that
you shouldnt let concerns of fairness or education cause you to discount this form of
resolutional analysis out of hand, as those concerns are presented and addressed in-round already
(in the form of theory).
The bottom line is that what Ive presented here is how truth statements work
grammatically how exactly that grammatical understanding translates into in-round truth value
is something that theres still a lot of dispute about. However, as a novice, having a sufficient
understanding of the way that truth statements (and truth values) work will give you an
enormous leg-up on the competition.
The Resolution as a Prescriptive Statement
As Im sure many of you have noticed, the resolution doesnt quite fit the form of the
truth statements that weve been looking at so far. Namely, the resolution isnt descriptive
rather than factual concerns, the resolution concerns itself with normative ones. In other words,
the resolution does not question what is, but rather what ought to be. Because of this, we call
statements like this resolution prescriptive. Dont worry, all the same techniques that weve
developed so far still apply. The only difference is that, when it comes to prescriptive statements,
the validity of the various truth values are not factually verifiable, at least not directly. Instead,
the validity of the resolutions truth values is whats up for debate. So, at this point, we have a
reasonably coherent vision of how the resolution translates into a debate round a good debate
round is not just two people arguing different things. Instead, a good debate round is concerned
with determining the truth or falsity of the resolution in a reasoned and logical manner the
debaters argue about what the truth conditions of the resolution are, and then proceed to argue
further about whether or not those truth conditions are true. This categorization neatly
encompasses almost all of what goes on in even the highest-level debate rounds; arguments that
your opponent makes are either concerned with what the truth values of the resolution are, or
whether those values are true or false.
Now, enumerating truth values of a prescriptive statement is immediately more difficult

than those of a descriptive statement, primarily because the truth of a prescriptive statement is
entirely dependent on the outcome of the debate about what the words in the resolution actually
mean. However, the text of the resolution does seem able to be broken down into two equally
important phrases:
1) Civil disobedience in a democracy

2) in a democracy is morally justified.
I choose this particular way of breaking down the text of the resolution in order to
indicate the importance of the various words and phrases that make up the text. Its important to
realize that the words in the resolution are conditioned by each other their meaning is at least
partially informed by their location and significance relative to the other words in the sentence.
Here, the word democracy is serving a dual purpose; it not only conditions the first phrase in
the resolution (as there could conceivably be a difference between civil disobedience in general
and civil disobedience in a democracy), but it also conditions the second phrase as well (since
what is or isnt morally justified could very well be informed by the society in which that
justification is taking place). The affirmative proves the resolution true by a) specifying an
interpretation of each of these phrases and b) demonstrating that those interpretations, when
taken together, coincide and necessitate the truth of the statement.
Here, Im going to deviate slightly from the traditional form of a topic analysis, in that
Im only going to be discussing one position on each side of the topic. My primary motivation
for pursuing this particular option is the quality of argumentation Im able to provide as I said
earlier, part of my goal in writing this analysis is to demonstrate the methods you should be
using to think about arguments. In that vein, Im going to, for each side of the topic, flesh out
one specific idea for a position in quite a bit of depth; my hope in doing so is to model the way
that arguments should be constructed when writing cases. I make no claims that these are the
only positions on the topic, or even that theyre the best ones on the topic. I do believe,
however, that the positions Im presenting are viable ones, and that theyre relatively
straightforward and easy to understand.
A Rawlsian View of the Affirmative
The affirmative position that Ill seek to develop is grounded in the political philosophy
of John Rawls, a well-renowned and foundational political thinker. Some of you may already
been familiar with some of Rawls political ideals he holds in high esteem the role of
tolerance and justice when it comes to the making and following of laws. The argument Ill be
developing here doesnt, however, necessitate a prior understanding of Rawls philosophy, as
Rawls doesnt found his argument on notions of political obligations or the importance of
tolerance. Instead, in his justification of civil disobedience, Rawls points to what he calls the
natural duty of justice. Essentially, the argument here is that, so long as we recognize justice
to be a normative good (which is to say, so long as justice is a concept that motivates us to act
according to it), then the duty of justice which naturally follows from that recognition is a duty
to strive for the most justice possible in any particular situation. In developing this natural duty,
Rawls is seeking to answer and negotiate a problem that he sees in the concept of civil
disobedience itself namely, that while the goals of such disobedience usually claim
themselves to be just, the act itself necessitates violating the law, which Rawls sees as being a
societal codification of justice. So then, at what point is the injustice and harm to our liberty
sufficient to justify ignoring laws that were previously agreed upon to be just? Rawls answer
here is simple: that such a tipping point doesnt actually exist, nor should it. Instead, justice
must be understood as a constant drive to achieve the most just state of affairs possible in the
current situation, even if that drive necessitates disregarding constructs like the law.
So what exactly is the concern thats being outlined above? Upon reflection, the concern
that Rawls is addressing seems to be one of risks namely, that legitimating the disregarding of
a law for the purpose of civil disobedience opens the door to disregarding that law in the future
as well (and potentially, disregarding the moral foundations of that law). Its important to note
here that the primary concern Rawls has (or at least, the one that hes addressing) is the
disregarding of the law. The reason for this is because Rawls sees legal and political institutions
like laws and the social contract as solutions to the problem of moral pluralism. According to
Rawls, we negotiate our moral differences with others by joining together to form a society, and
in that society we develop laws as a means of resolving our moral disputes. The full
development of this particular part of Rawls philosophy would take far more space than I have
here, but its important to understand why Rawls cares about breaking the law so much.
There is, however, a sense of justice that exists outside of the realm of law, and its
exactly this sense that Rawls appeals to when he finds justification for the law-breaking nature
of civil disobedience. The argument here is twofold. First, as human beings, we all have some
sense of what we personally believe to be just, and of course those interpretations are different
for each individual. As such, appealing to this understanding of the sense of justice doesnt
really make sense. However, there is a second sense of justice that Rawls claims exists and
can be appealed to a certain innate sense of each individual to respond positively to civility
and to engage fully in the cooperative effort of building a better society. This innate sense of
justice can come from a number of places as Rawls suggests, it could come from the distinctly
personal sense of responsibility and rightness which comes from growing up in a society. It
could also, however, come from the grounding of any sense of justice, which is the idea that we
ought to make society a better place. From here, the link to civil disobedience should be clear.
First, Rawls specific understanding of the concept of civil disobedience demarcates it from
things like anarchy or violent revolution by claiming that civil disobedience is characterized by
a certain respect for the process and structure of law itself. As such, civil disobedience is
necessarily justified in a democratic society, assuming of course that democratic methods of
correcting the injustice have so far failed (or that the democratic system in question is
insufficiently just). The second link, however, is more subtle. The argument here is that there is
something important with regards to disobedients non-adversarial breaking of the law
essentially, that those who engage in civil disobedience are willing to suffer punishment for
their crimes. Claims that this should be the case are often criticized by social revolutionaries
after all, if the law itself is unjust, why would punishment for breaking the law be just? The
claim, however, is not quite that. Instead, the claim is that, regardless of the justness of the
punishment, it must be borne so as to legitimate the authority of governmental structures in
general, and so as to foster an environment for peaceful cooperation and rational discussion.
A Kantian View of the Negative
Kant is an incredibly popular author in the debate community, and for good (and easily
discernible) reasons. He offers authoritative moral rules which are both well-justified and easy
to link to the various moral, legal, political, and social issues with which debaters are often
confronted. One of Kants most famous moral formulations is what he calls the Categorical
Imperative. This imperative consists of a number of different moral formulations, but there is
one which Ill focus on here: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but also at the same
time as an end. The justifications for this particular maxim that Kant offers are many and
varied, and as Ive said above, illustrating fully any of those justifications here would take more
space than I have. Suffice to say, the thrust of Kants justification here is grounded in what he
identifies as the source of normativity which is to say, the place from which our value
judgments draw their legitimacy. Kant identifies human rationality as the source of such
judgments, since we invest value in end-state and ideals via rational deduction. Therefore,
because human beings are necessarily the source of moral authority, human rationality is
considered to be the only definitively invaluable moral good. As such, treating any individual as
a means to an end would disregard and be inconsistent with their infinite worth and
inviolability.
So what does this have to do with civil disobedience? Well, a large part of Kants
argument is that resistance against the state constitutes using the state as nothing more than a
means to ones own end (i.e. an end that the state does not share). This concern will be
immediately brushed off, as advocates of civil disobedience will claim that the state is simply
wrong on this matter that if they were truly just, the state would share the same end as the
disobedients. However, this concern ignores the full form of the argument. Even if its true that
the state ought to hold the same end as those engaging in the disobedience, its certainly not true
that the state would hold the end of being forced to act justly to be valuable (as that implies an
inconsistency with the states own will).
There is another concept of importance in Kantian philosophy, one which draws upon the
above-described importance of rationality. Another precept of Kants categorical imperative
states that we should Act only according to a rule that could be willed as universal law.
Essentially, Kants argument is that a rule for acting is permissible so long as the entirety of
society adopting that rule would be just. Civil disobedience proposes the maxim, Whenever
doing so will prevent injustice, I will act to break the laws of the state and resist the acts of the
sovereign. There is nothing contradictory about this maxim in itself which is to say, when
taken as a rule for just one individual, there is not an evident contradiction, as my resistance to a
sovereign obeyed by everyone else does not negatively impact the power of the sovereign.
However, when the maxim is taken as a rule for society, it necessarily generates a contradiction.
On one hand, such a maxim cries out for the resistance of the structure of law (when that
structure is unjust.) However, on the other hand, the maxim necessitates complete
lawlessness, and justifies a state of affairs in which basic natural rights of humans are not
protected by law (since the disregarding of law is easily justifiable). As such, resistance to the
state is absolutely prohibited by Kantian philosophy, since the maxim that would justify such
resistance is necessarily contradictory.
Conclusion
In closing, I hope that this analysis has been helpful for some of you, particularly those of
you that are picking up LD debate for the first time. Its not only understandable, but expected
that some of the things Ive been talking about may be confusing to you these are concepts
that graduate students in philosophy programs are still grappling with, and so attempting to
understand them as a high-schooler with no previous philosophical experience is
understandably daunting. However, its my firm (and well-evidenced) belief that high school
debate is one of the most educationally rewarding activities you can be involved in, and I
promise that struggling through and trying to broach the concepts discussed here (as well as just
philosophy in general) will be incredibly rewarding, both personally and competitively.
About Brian Hodge
Brian Hodge attended and competed for Cypress Falls High School and graduated in June
2012. He competed in Lincoln Douglas debate for 4 years, achieving success on both the
regional and national levels. He qualified for the TFA State Tournament four times, and reached
elimination rounds his junior and senior years. In addition, he received bids to the Tournament
of Champions his sophomore and junior years, fully qualifying his senior year with a total of five
career bids. He was the champion of the Houston Memorial tournament, a finalist at the St.
Mark's Invitational, and a quarterfinalist at the Berkeley Invitational. He is currently a
sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is studying Mechanical Engineering.
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Throughout history, civil disobedience has been a common occurrence in times of
turmoil and strife within developed democracies. These historical examples are going to be key
for many debates on this topic as well as the ideas and moral justifications of the leaders and
policy makers of the time. In the context of a Lincoln-Douglas debate round, this topic posits
many interesting questions and areas of research for a novice debater. The major issues
addressed in this analysis include topic wording, framing issues, affirmative ideas, negative
ideas, and concluding notes and advice.
Topic Wording
Civil disobedience: The first several words in the resolution are going to be crucial in
almost every debate on this topic. The phrase civil disobedience is unique in the context of the
resolution as it is a term of art, meaning a definition of each term doesnt necessarily give an
adequate definition of the phrase. In other words, the phrase has its own unique definition. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the term and its origin tracing it back to Henry
David Thoreau. Kimberley Brownlee from the University of Warwick writes:
The term civil disobedience was coined by Henry David Thoreau in his 1848
essay to describe his refusal to pay the state poll tax implemented by the
American government to prosecute a war in Mexico and to enforce the Fugitive
Slave Law. In his essay, Thoreau observes that only a very few people heroes,
martyrs, patriots, reformers in the best sense serve their society with their
consciences, and so necessarily resist society for the most part, and are commonly
treated by it as enemies. Thoreau, for his part, spent time in jail for his protest.
Many after him have proudly identified their protests as acts of civil disobedience
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and have been treated by their societies sometimes temporarily, sometimes
indefinitely as its enemies. 1
Notice that rather than taking an action against a government, Thoreau was punished for
omission. This distinction could lead to a really interesting debate about inaction and the duties
of a citizen.
In modern times, civil disobedience is still very prevalent. In 2011, there was a sudden
outbreak of protests in Wisconsin after the passage of the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also known as
the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill. After enduring five months of protests, the legislative branch
and governor Scott Walker refused to budge. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive
magazine reported "People see that Walker won everything big that he asked for, and despite all
the great activism, we don't have anything to show for it. The mass protests that I expected this
week at the capitol in Madison did not materialize." By June 14, the number of protesters at the
Capital was approximately 5,000 and by June 16 the number was down to about 1,000. Even
though this example of civil disobedience was large and recognized nation wide, the protests did
not directly change the actions of the government.
For debate purposes, the affirmative should aim to make civil disobedience look as
harmless and as effective at change as possible. This makes for an easier affirmative ballot. The
resolution does not ask if civil disobedience is obligated morally by citizens without a society,
rather, if it is simply justified. As for the negative side, it would be best to highlight how
ineffective and costly civil disobedience is and how other methods could be more effective.
Democracy: It is presumed that the power and authority of a democracy comes from the
consent of its citizens and that the majority ought to control that authority. Since most
democracies such as the United States were founded by the people, for the people, any action
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1!Brownlee,!Kimberley,!"Civil!Disobedience",!The!Stanford!Encyclopedia!of!Philosophy!(Spring!2010!Edition),!Edward!N.!Zalta!(ed.),!URL!
=!<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/civilPdisobedience/>.!
!
that doesnt use the nations authority to maximize protection or preserve its existence could
potentially be using this authority incorrectly while failing its duty as a state.
It is important to note that civil disobedience has to be justified within a democracy, as

per the resolution. I believe an advanced debater will not only justify why civil disobedience is
morally correct, but also within the context of a democracy. In other words, debaters can
highlight the benefits or harms of disobedience and impact them back to how a democracy ought
to function. This not only excludes arguments that do not pertain to what is or isnt justified in a
democracy, but also makes it harder for an opponent to argue what a democracy ought to look
like and what is justified within it.
Be aware of the A before democracy. A is a single article denoting a single entity

while not specifying a specific subject. This means that while much of the topic literature may be
specific to the United States, it is never specified in the resolution.
Morally justified: As I mentioned earlier in the analysis, it is extremely important to

differentiate between moral justification and moral obligation. This difference can be broken
down very simply. For example, take something that is justifiable and reason that compels you to
do such an action. This alone could not create an obligation unless acting upon reason was moral
and there was perhaps a consequence to not acting (such as being immoral). Together, something
that is justifiable and with sufficient moral reason to do so, would result in an obligation.
Therefore, it would be logical to conclude that even though the resolution does not necessarily
entail an obligation, if the affirmative proves that civil disobedience is obligatory, it should
textually affirm.
Many novices struggle with defining what it means to be moral, as a specific definition
of morality is usually extremely vague. In order to determine what is morally justifiable in a
Lincoln-Douglas debate, you conceptualize what is good or right through a framework or
ethical theory. This allows for either side to strategically choose a framework that benefits them.
!
For example, it might perhaps be strategic for an affirmative to claim that the voices and opinion
of individual citizens is a moral good so if they arent in compliance with a public policy, they
should have the right to civil disobedience.
Framing Issues
There are a few issues that should be addressed in debate rounds on this topic that can
help clarify the round. First, I believe it is important to address the question of what sort of
democracy your side is advocating for. For example, what is morally justified in a libertarian
democracy may look different than what would be justified in an authoritative democracy. As a
debater, you must frame what a democracy ought to look like and if civil disobedience is
justified within it. Next, addressing what civil disobedience is key, especially with a
consequential debate. As I mentioned previously, an affirmative debater will want to make civil
disobedience look as harmless and effective as possible while the negative will want to define it
in the opposite manner. Lastly, a majority of the time, historical examples can really help build
your case. These can really help with a topic that has historical roots, such as this one.
Affirmative Case Ideas
There are several viable strategies for an affirmative debater on this topic. A few logical
positions include a consequential case, a social contract case, and an autonomy case.
A consequential affirmative case seems extremely intuitive because there are many
examples of civil disobedience. The large issue with this affirmative position is that the debater
must be able to justify a framework in the context of a democracy. In other words, the
justifications for a strategic affirmative case are specific to how a democracy ought to be
consequential in nature. This argument can be made in several ways through logical conclusions
and reasoning. After justifying an ends-based framework, it would be strategic for an affirmative
to research and present several examples with empirical data showing that a civil disobedience
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benefited the democracy. This sort of position is fairly stock or basic and logical but also liked
by most judges. This position would also highlight the harms of civil rights abuses throughout
history, such as the racist Jim Crow laws or the oppression of women in the Middle East. These
harms give even further justification to civil disobedience in a democracy but are only effective
if you establish how civil disobedience leads to change.
The second potential case for an affirmative debater would be a social contract
affirmative. The social contract is a theory that individuals give up rights to enter into a society
in exchange for rights (i.e. protection). Several political philosophers, including John Locke,
would argue that if the government violates the natural rights of its citizens, those citizens ought
to revolt or act out against their government. There is a strong case to be made that citizens have
a right to civil disobedience if their rights are being infringed upon. John Locke writes, And
thus the Community may be said in this respect to be always the Supream Power, but not as
considered under any Form of Government, because this Power of the People can never take
place till the Government be dissolved. 2 Although a complete deconstruction of the government
isnt what the resolution is asking for, the same logic can be used to justify disobedience. The
framework for this case would say that a legitimate government takes form when it correctly
adheres to the social contract. Therefore, the affirmative simply justifies why civil disobedience
would be present under a just social contract and, thus, fulfilling the resolutional burden.
The last case that seems extremely logical would be an autonomy affirmative case. This
specific case would require a meta-ethic. In other words, a debater would have to say that the
freedom of choice is what makes individuals moral beings. Therefore, we ought to respect their
choices. Because individuals are being oppressed and their autonomy is being violated, any
action they take in reaction would be considered justified. Insofar as ethical systems can only
support the free actions of individuals, any violation of ones freedom destroys their ability to set
ends for themselves and reflect on what they ought to do. It is not a far stretch to say that when
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2!John!Locke,!Two!Treatises!of!Government,!ed.!Thomas!Hollis!(London:!A.!Millar!et!al.,!1764).!
Accessed!from!http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/222!on!2013P08P28!
!
a government violates the rights of citizens and oppresses them, their autonomy is violated so
they naturally revolt.
Negative Case Ideas
Negating on this topic is fairly tricky but there are several really strong positions a
negative debater could explore. I would implore a competitor to consider a social contract case, a
rule of law case, and a revolt case.
Unlike Locke, Thomas Hobbes would most likely not agree with the resolution. Hobbes
believed that social contract was created in order to avoid the state of nature, as he believed it
would be nasty, brutish, and short. Therefore, even if the government or the sovereign acts
oppressively or harshly, citizens ought not revolt. This specific case directly clashes with a
Locke social contract AC and would allow for coherent discussion of what a social contract
ought to look like and what are the duties of a citizen under that contract. Hobbes would argue
that any action that is against the law of the government is inherently unjust. As Hobbes stated,
He therefore that breaketh his Covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with
reason do so, cannot be received into any society. 3 Penn State University conceptualized
Hobbes by arguing that, By definition, civil disobedience is any act, which is disobeying the
civil authority. Obviously, any such act would qualify as breaking the bounds of the mutual
agreement between the people and the government, and is therefore inherently unjust.4
Therefore, even if civil disobedience could potentially lead to positive consequences, it would
not be consistent with the social contract and therefore immoral.
Similar to the Harvard team in the movie The Great Debaters, rule of law (or practice
laws) is an extremely viable strategy. Unlike the social contract NC, this case argues that the
laws that are formed by the government determine what the government is. By breaking laws or
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3!Hobbes,!Thomas,!and!C.!B.!Macpherson.!Leviathan.!London:!Penguin,!1988.!Print.!
4!"Civil!Disobedience."!Civil!Disobedience.!Penn!State!University,!n.d.!Web.!27!Aug.!2013.!
<http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/n/n/nns5039/Art101/asst5.html>.!
!
by acting outside the laws through civil disobedience, you violate the authority of laws and
destroy the meaning of governance. Tamar Schapiro conceptualizes this by interpreting Rawls.
She writes:
Rawls illustrates the logical priority of practice rules over actions with
reference to moves in the game of American baseball. Outside the stage-
setting of the game, it is certainly possible to throw a ball, run, or swing
a peculiarly shaped piece of wood. But it is impossible to steal base, or
strike out, or draw a walk, or make an error, or balk. Where the rules of
baseball are in force, movements come to constitute moves of particular
kinds, and conversely in the absence of such rules, actions which might
appear to be moves are properly described as mere movements.
The conclusion a debater can make from this argument is that by violating the rule of
law, actions arent legal or moral, but rather something amoral.
The last position is taking an opposite approach. Instead of arguing against civil
disobedience, a negative could argue that civil disobedience is mandatory and obligatory if a
minority is being oppressed. This could potentially coop all offense the affirmative advocates for
while still being negative ground. The large framework issue this negative has to justify is that
there is a difference between justification and obligation. If a negative fails to do so, an
affirmative can simply say that obligation simply means justification and therefore, all offense
the negative generates is now offense for the affirmative. If a debater chooses to run this
argument, be wary of this definitional debate and prepare for these perms.
Conclusion and Advice
I really like this topic and I hope it sparks interest for many newcomers to Lincoln-
Douglas debate. In order to be successful on this topic, I believe it would be advantageous to
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research and read recent examples of civil disobedience as well as historically common examples
such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Having historical knowledge will put you ahead in
almost any debate and will allow you to be perceptually dominant. I would also recommend
reading articles about civil disobedience from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This
website has high quality articles that break down philosophical ideas and explain arguments
without an overuse of complicated jargon.
I wish all of you the best of luck debating Lincoln-Douglas and I hope this new
experience broadens your horizons while improving your critical thinking and communication
skills.
About Jack Ave
Jack Ave attended Okoboji High School (IA) and graduated in 2013. He competed on the
local and national circuit in Lincoln-Douglas debate and advanced to elimination rounds his
senior year at national tournaments such as Harvard, Blake, Dowling, Iowa Caucus, Valley, and
Omaha Westside along with receiving numerous speaking awards. He was a three time national
qualifier and his senior year, was the West Iowa District Champion. Jack was the first from his
school to attend the Tournament of Champions. Jack attends the University of Northern Iowa
and is majoring in Political Science and Political Communications.
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AFF$$ Punishment$for$a$Civil$Disobedient$in$a$Democracy$Must$
be$Justifiable.$
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Huijun, Liu. "Towards The Reconciliation Of Civil Disobedience And Democracy." The
Peoples University of China, 2011. Web. 28 Aug. 2013.
<http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10635/23746/LiuHJ.pdf?sequence=1>.
It is understandable why an authoritarian regime might punish the civil disobedient

because the goal of such a regime, as generally believed, is to protect the privileges of the few.
Anyone who dares to challenge the interests of the dominant class might be punished
without consideration of the reasonableness of the challenge. Punishment, under such a
regime has no necessary relation to justice. But it is totally different in a democracy. A
democracy purports to be a system committed to justice. Punishment, therefore, in a
democracy should also be used to enhance justice. So any punishment meted out in a
democracy should have a justification. In view of this important relationship between justice
and punishment in a democracy, we should ask: Is civil disobedience justified in a democracy
because of its promotion of justice? Must civil disobedients be punished in a democracy as
they are punished in a totalitarian regime? If not, then what is the best way to moderate or
eliminate the penalty for them?
Champion)Briefs) ) 31)
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AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Justified$in$Contemporary$and$
Imperfect$Democracies.$
$
However, I follow some liberals such as John Rawls in arguing [argues] that civil
disobedience is still justified in contemporary democracies. But my justification for civil
disobedience is not a simple repeat of previous liberal arguments. I will invoke the concepts of
democratic deficits and justice deficits to show that contemporary democracy is imperfect. In an
imperfect democracy, citizens are justified in resorting to civil disobedience in order to be
loyal to democratic ideals. Additionally, in order to show the justification of civil
disobedience, the role of civil disobedience in a democracy will also be discussed because it
can help us better understand the positive effects of civil disobedience on democracy.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Prevents$Democracies$from$Falling$
into$Authoritarianism.$
$
Based on the justification of civil disobedience and its potential contributions to the
evolvement of democracy, I argue that the civil disobedients are good citizens that are
needed by democracy. Compared to those citizens who obey any law enacted by the state, the
civil disobedient only obeys the law conditionally. When he [a citizen] finds that a law is in
conflict with the spirit of ideal democracy, he will seek to redress it, even in the form of
disobedience. This spirit of vigilance serves as a reminder to the state that its power is not
unrestricted and, therefore, might be able to prevent democracy from degenerating into
authoritarianism.
!
AFF$$ In$a$Moral$Democracy,$the$Tyranny$of$the$Majority$is$
Restricted.$
However, it is not enough to understand democracy merely from the perspective of procedures
and processes. Democracy not only means a form of government but also a set of values
which are above democracy. Otherwise, the minority will be very easily subjected to the
tyranny of the majority. Some values such as equality, freedom of speech, and freedom of
religion should be independent of the majority and the government. This is most obvious in the
emphasis that all actual democracies place on the values it promotes, such as equality,
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on. The American Constitution, for example,
limits itself, forbidding the legislation of any law, which would infringe freedom of
expression and freedom of religion, even if a majority of the people or a majority of the
legislature votes to establish that law. Since democracy aims to be a regime of freedom, it
should be conducted in the light of values, which are independent of the majority and the
government because democratic processes per se do not guarantee the fulfillment of these
values. Consequently, a good democracy should not only be responsive to the will of the
majority, it should also ensure social justice and meet some substantive standards. In
consideration of this goal, some scholars point out that the rule of the people is not a good
definition of democracy; a more accurate one would be the rule of the people restricting
itself against the tyranny of the majority of the people.
!
AFF$$ Misrepresentation$Leads$to$a$Democratic$Deficit.$
The first is a democratic deficit. An ideal democracy can reflect the sovereign will of the
people very accurately so that there is no gap between the state will and the will of the
people, viz. the state will and the peoples will in an ideal democracy are highly consistent with
each other. But, in an imperfect democracy, the situation is different. Gaps often exist
between the will of the people and the state will as reflected in the laws and policies. When
such a gap occurs, that is, when the state will departs from the will of the people, a deficit is
produced. I call this kind of deficit a democratic deficit. Democratic deficits reflect the
departure of the state will from the sovereign will of the people.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Even$Justified$Under$Majority$Rule.$
In summary, the majority principle is not an absolute rule in a democracy, but even if it
were absolute, civil disobedience would not likely to be subversive of it. The broad
acceptance of majority rule does not preclude civil disobedience. By this, I am not saying that
minorities should have right to make decisions for the majority, I only mean that majority is not
necessarily wiser than the minority. An evil does not become right only because that evil is
approved by the majority; in such a case the evil is even greater. Some form of the majority
principle is necessary. In agreeing to a democratic constitution one accepts at the same time
the principle of majority rule. As long as the laws enacted by the majority are bearable, and its
injustice does not exceed certain limits, we are obligated to obey them in order to show
respect to the will of the majority and make a constitutional regime workable; but when
the enactments of majority exceed certain bounds of injustice, the citizen may consider civil
disobedience even though it is against the will of majority.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Key$to$Establishing$Strong,$Lasting$
Democracies.$
The significant role of civil disobedience in the establishment of democracy is persuasively

explained in a recent study led by Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman. The study titled
How Freedom is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy covers transitions that
have occurred from 1971 to 2004. Altogether, the transitions of 67 countries are included.
One of the principal findings of the study is that people power movements, including civil
disobedience, matter and nonviolent civic forces are a major source for decisive change in
most transitions. The force of civic resistance was a key factor in driving 50 of 67
transitions, or over 70 percent of countries where transitions began as dictatorial systems
fell and/or new states arose from the disintegration of multinational states. It is clear that
civil disobedience and other nonviolent protests, rather than revolution and violence, were
the main tactics for bringing about political change in these countries. Moreover, the study
also found that democracies that were established through nonviolent tactics are more
stable and sustainable than those founded on violence. Recourse to violent conflict in resisting
oppression is significantly less likely to produce sustainable democracy. Therefore, it is safe to
conclude from the study that civil disobedience and other similar tactics are instrumental
in the establishment of democratic states. It is also reasonable to suggest that nonviolent
disobedience, if available, is a preferable way of fighting for democracy than violent resistance.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Operates$as$a$Safety$Valve$for$
Democracy$and$Checks$Abuse.
Civil disobedience is not a threat to democracy and the constitutional order, but provides a
mechanism for stabilizing it. In fact, an important function of civil disobedience is to serve as
a safety valve for discontent, with the effect of preventing anger from accumulating and
escalating into violence. As Haksar argues in his book Civil Disobedience, Threats and Offers:
Gandhi and Rawls, civil disobedience, when properly conducted, can be a stabilizing device
and can work as a safety-valve because minorities or the disadvantaged may feel compelled
to resort to violent measures if civil disobedience were not allowed, even as a last resort.
Indeed, it is easy to imagine that a social movement, if suppressed, could migrate from a purely
nonviolent form of civil disobedience to a more drastic form, and if further suppressed, to
revolution. For example, if the movement led by Gandhi had been brutally suppressed by
English colonists, the Indians might have resorted to violent revolution to gain the
independence of India. Similarly, if the civil rights movement in the United States had been met
with systemic and lethal violence, the African-Americans might have to win their freedom
through civil war rather than nonviolent civil disobedience. Therefore, civil disobedience,
though illegal, could in some cases prevent violent actions from taking place and serve to
stabilize democracy.
!
AFF$$ Punishing$the$Disobedient$is$Harmful$to$Democracy.$
It might also be excessively unjust and problematic to punish civil disobedience as ordinary
offences. As has been argued earlier, civil disobedience is committed not or not only for
personal gain but for the interests of the whole society, or the so-called common good. It is
often in the interests of everyone involved, including democratic institutions, the development of
which depends on the ability of different views to be fully discussed and communicated.
Punishing civil disobedience, which is beneficial to democracy, therefore, is counter-
productive for the whole society. From this it follows that a democratic government has a
special responsibility to try to protect civil disobedience and soften the predicament of its
practitioners. King on the one hand received a Nobel Prize and was honored for his contribution
to society by the President of the United States, but, on the other hand, he was prosecuted and
jailed for his actions. Is it always necessary, we might ask, that the person who performs
civil disobedience be arrested and punished? Why must a man suffer for an act which
ultimately benefits society? Would it not be possible to make some provision to show leniency
and to soften the predicament of such courageous practitioners? The answers to such questions
are contentious. But, if a government deserves the name of democracy, it cannot be
indifferent to the suffering of these courageous practitioners and punish them as ordinary
criminals, while claiming to be a democracy committed to fairness and justice.
!
AFF$$ A$Democracy$has$to$Tolerate$Civil$Disobedience.$
A democratic system has a special obligation to tolerate civil disobedience. Civil

disobedience is detrimental to an authoritarian regime, but it is beneficial to a democracy.
Moreover, democracy is said to be a system committed to openness and freedom.
Suppression of civil disobedience, which is a highly self-restrained protest, in defense of the
system subverts the values for which it was established. In addition, the tolerance of some
acts of civil disobedience in a democracy is unlikely to inspire further violence, as often
happens in an authoritarian regime where the great anger of the suppressed may be ignited by
even the slightest tolerance of civil disobedience.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Does$Not$Violate$the$Principle$of$
Majority$Rule.$
Kellner, Marc. Democracy and Civil Disobediance. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 37, No. 4.
1975. Web. 14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2129181>.
There are a number of things which can be said in response to this argument. In what sense is a
civil disobedient who violates the law openly, peacefully, and with acceptance of
punishment violating the principle of majority rule? In a most important sense he is
respecting the will of the majority by complying with it in allowing himself to be punished
for an act for which, in many cases, he thinks he ought not be punished. Even if civil
disobedience does tend to subvert the principle of majority rule, it does not follow that such
protests will never be justifiable. It is surely conceivable that some acts of civil disobedience,
particularly direct disobedience, may be aimed at laws and policies so cruel and unjust
(although enacted democratically) that the good done by the disobedience outweighs the evil
done (if it is done) in disrupting the democracy.
!
AFF$$ Arguments$About$Majority$Rules$Are$Not$Valid$in$a$
Democracy.$
It is important to distinguish, as is often not done, between 'democracy' and 'the principle of
majority rule'. The two are not one and the same. "Majority rule," in Carl Cohen's words, "is an
instrument of democracy, and not its substance." Cohen adduces a number of considerations
to substantiate this claim. First, the fact that a community is a democracy may preclude its
adopting certain decision making rules, but does not force it to adopt any particular one.
Second, many decisions in democracies are made in accord with plurality rule, not
majority rule. Third, many of the institutions associated with democracies operate to
prevent the majority from being absolutely decisive. "In the United States," for example,
"such institutions as the judicial review of legislative action, the Electoral College, and the
representation of each state by two senators regardless of its population, are invoked deliberately
to protect minorities from exploitation by a majority." Finally, where it is possible, it is
consistent with democracy to arrive at decisions on the basis of consensus, as opposed to
majority rule. All of these considerations point up the instrumental character of majority
rule in democracy. It is quite possible, therefore, that in a case in which democracy as an
end is endangered, the good democrat may be forced to violate the principle of majority
rule in order to defend democracy.
!
AFF$$ Disobedience$Is$Consistent$with$Democratic$Values.$
Now what I take to be the weakest aspect of Sidney Hook's claim becomes clear. He says one
ought not call oneself a democrat if one disobeys an unjust law even if it is morally necessary to
disobey it. But the person who disobeys unjust laws which are radically inconsistent with
democratic ideals is just the person who is displaying a commitment to democracy, not the
citizen who mindlessly obeys every antidemocratic or undemocratic law (with reference to
ideal democracy) enacted by his government! Hook, of course, could reject this argument were
he willing to assert that the notion of democracy is exhausted by that of majority rule. But
the difficulties associated with holding this position have already been shown and will be
further demonstrated below.
!
AFF$$ A$Civilian$Must$be$Disobedient$if$There$is$an$Imperfect$
Democracy.$
The arguments based on democracy cited above all take the workings of a mass
democratic government to be an end in itself. These arguments are based on the claim that
'democracy' is best defined in terms of procedures rather than ideals. They operate as if the
functioning of such a government is the basis for whatever moral and practical superiority
democracy can claim. These arguments are also based on the assumption that the
democrat's allegiance to democratic government is based on the fact of popular
sovereignty. These arguments, then, are based on confusions in the meaning of
'democracy'.
By showing that 'imperfect democracy' as defined here well captures what is ordinarily
meant by 'democracy', I will demonstrate an important weakness in the three arguments against
civil disobedience in democracy analyzed above. More important, I will be well on the way to
supporting the contention that in certain cases a sincere democrat would not only be
consistent in violating a democratically derived law but would have to violate it in order to
be consistent.
!
AFF$$ Disobedience$is$Necessary$in$a$Democracy.$
If we are to understand and evaluate actually existing democratic governments in terms of the
definition of 'imperfect democracy' then a major and fundamental purpose of democratic
governments is the actualization of ideal democracy. This is true by definition. I further take it to
be true that in any case in which a person adopts some means or set of means to attain some
goal or set of goals he will be more strongly committed to the goals than to the means. This
would seem to be so especially in a case in which the means adopted actually hinder the
attainment of the goal, instead of furthering it.
Assuming these claims to be true, it follows inescapably that the consistent democrat may on
occasion be in a position in which his very commitment to democracy forces him to violate
the laws of a democratic government. If a law passed by a democratic government is so
antidemocratic (by the criteria of ideal democracy) that obedience to it must clearly and
gravely hinder, rather than advance the attainment of democracy, it is the duty of the
democrat to disobey it. There are antidemocratic tendencies in all democracies. One very
effective way of thwarting them, and of promoting democracy, is to refuse to go along with
them, even on those occasions when they seem to bear the imprimatur of democracy itself.
!
AFF$$ True$Democracy$Allows$Room$for$Significant$Changes$
Aimed$at$Increasing$Equality.$
$
Lyons, David. "Moral Judgment, Historical Reality, and Civil Disobedience." Philosophy and
Public Affairs. 1998. Web. 14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2672840>.
Moral misjudgment. Given the first part of my argument, one cannot help wondering why
theorists of civil disobedience should have imagined a moral presumption favoring compliance
with laws supporting brutally oppressive institutions. For the injustices addressed have been
significant, systematic, and deeply entrenched, and the theorists have usually been
sympathetic to the resisters' grievances. It might be suggested that the assumption of
political obligation had merely tactical value. The relevant literature defended civil rights and
antiwar campaigns that were condemned by officials and other prominent citizens. Despite the
decorous character of most civil rights campaigns, for example, the movement was highly
controversial. It emerged in the 1950s, during a period of anti-Communist hysteria and political
repression, in which the government at all levels routinely persecuted lawful dissenters. Civil
rights activists went further than most other dissenters not only by challenging authority but by
occasionally breaking the law. To make matters worse, most civil rights activists were
Americans of color, who were expected to know their place in the officially sanctioned system of
White supremacy. Under the circumstances, the most pressing issue for theorists who
sympathized with the movement was the justifiability of its unpopular actions even when
they broke the law. For critics of civil disobedience invoked the notion of a comprehensive
moral obligation to comply with law, especially in a self-styled constitutional democracy.
Theorists understood that any plausible obligation to obey must be defeasible and could be
outweighed. They saw that the movement identified grave deficiencies that officially
sanctioned procedures failed to address. They argued that a just system allows room for a
limited class of unlawful acts which aim at reform. They focused, understandably, on the most
decorous, least threatening, most easily justifiable form of political resistance, in which
disobedients act publicly and accept arrest and punishment.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$in$a$Democracy$Carries$a$Taint$of$
Autocracy,$becomes$Countermajorian.$$
$
Markovits, Daniel. "Democratic Disobedience." Yale Law Journal. 2005. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1417&context=fss_pap
ers>.
Even when the laws or policies at which a protest takes aim are indeed bad or wrong, political
disobedience may be imprudent or even counterproductive: Disobedience must always contend
with the possibility that it will be met with overwhelming repression or trigger a popular
backlash against the very ends it seeks to promote. But when the underlying political order
that has produced the objectionable laws or policies is legitimate, disobedience triggers
concerns of political principle as well. It seems, in such cases, that political disobedience
risks becoming itself a form of oppression, in which protesters attempt improperly to impose
their personal political preferences upon others. Nor is this concern answered (or even addressed)
by emphasizing the distinction between political disobedience and ordinary crime: Oppression
need not involve greed or self-dealing, and even the benevolent may overstep their
authority. The worry about oppression, moreover, is particularly salient when the political
system in which disobedience occurs, and that underlies the laws and policies that
disobedient protest seeks to unseat, is democratic. In such cases, the oppression that
political disobedience threatens to impose takes on a familiar countermajoritarian form.
Political disobedience in a democracy carries a taint of autocracy.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Acts$to$Correct$Problems$in$the$
Democratic$System.$
ers>.
I seek in these pages to set out a new account of political disobedience that underwrites a
sympathetic reconstruction of the prominent contemporary cases of disobedient protest and,
moreover, justifies some of them. This theory of disobedience is very different from the
traditional liberal view; it in some respects takes an opposite approach. In particular, the view
that I propose departs from the liberal project of justifying political disobedience from
without democracy, by reference to inherent limits on political authority, including even
the authority of democratic governments-an idea that renders liberal political
disobedience, among other things, democracy-limiting disobedience. My proposal, by
contrast, attempts to justify political disobedience from within democratic theory,
emphasizing the support that political disobedience can provide for the broader political
process by correcting democratic deficits in law and policy that inevitably threaten every
democracy. The argument aims to construct a precise account of these deficits and of the
contribution that political disobedience can play in overcoming them. Instead of being a theory
of democracy-limiting disobedience, this is a theory of democracy-enhancing disobedience or,
more simply, democratic disobedience. It aims to render plausible the counterintuitive claim that
disobeying the laws of a democratic state can serve democracy. Indeed, the argument casts
democratic disobedience as an unavoidable, integral part of a well- functioning democratic
process.
!
AFF$$ The$Liberal$View$Of$Democracy$is$a$Bad$Representation$
of$Democracys$True$Tenants.$
ers>.
The liberal view of democracy, in both its articulations, denies that democracy in its
common procedural sense can legitimately resolve deep disagreements about political
principles or even justice, and it therefore denies democracy the central place that it
occupies in the lived experience of politics and political authority.32 Instead, the liberal
view converts the democratic process into a residual category, to be employed only in the
narrow range of cases in which liberal principles of justice produce indeterminate results.
Moreover, although this tension between liberalism and democracy is underappreciated
outside political philosophy, it is accepted, and indeed advertised, by proponents of the
liberal view. Both Dworkin and Ackerman expressly identify the limits that their views
place on democratic politics.33 Rawls puts the point more strikingly still when he says that "we
submit our conduct to democratic authority only to the extent necessary to share equitably in the
inevitable imperfections of a constitutional system."34 Democracy's power to produce
authoritative resolutions of deep political disagreements remains a mystery, to be sure, but
the liberal view provides no answer. Indeed, the liberal view does not so much explain our
democratic intuitions as explain them away. Although these observations may not settle the
question against the liberal view, they surely motivate the alternative approach to democracy that
generates the account of democratic disobedience at which I am aiming.
!
$
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Against$Policies$That$Lack$True$
Democratic$Backing$is$Justified.$
ers>.
But even as such democratic inertia fosters the political engagements on which democratic
authority depends, it necessarily, on occasion, entrenches public policies against democratic
reevaluation and therefore creates democratic deficits. Policies that carry such democratic
deficits-including those related to nuclear deterrence or the Vietnam War-lack democratic
authority, on the republican view, because they are unsupported by any political
engagement of the form demanded by democratic sovereignty. The policies fall within the
scope of legitimate democratic authority, in the sense that a democratic sovereign might
properly choose them, but the democratic sovereign has not in fact so chosen. And political
disobedience against such policies is justified, on the republican view, by the democratic
deficits that the policies carry and, moreover, serves to overcome the political inertia that
lies behind these deficits and trigger a sovereign reengagement with the issues at hand.
Such disobedience is a necessary part of every well-functioning democratic politics and not
merely a defense against authoritarian oppression. It is distinctively democratic disobedience.
!
AFF$$ As$Democracies$Become$More$Complex,$the$Need$for$
Legitimate$Civil$Disobedience$Is$Grows.$
ers>.
Nor, finally, should it come as a surprise that the most prominent contemporary political
protests involve democratic rather than liberal disobedience. It seems natural-although
admittedly also speculative-to connect the growing prominence of democratic disobedience
to more fundamental developments in democratic politics and, in particular, to increases in
the democratic deficits that such politics typically, and often unavoidably, involve. On the
one hand, groups that might control or capture the political process have increasingly
sophisticated techniques at their disposal. In the United States, for example, the leadership of
the Democratic and Republican Parties has managed, by redistricting and other means, to
eliminate real competition for most federal legislative offices. This has created new possibilities
for soft authoritarianism, in which ruling elites protect their power and privilege without needing
to resort to the repressive practices at which liberal disobedience properly takes aim. On the
other hand, dramatic increases in social pluralism and equally dramatic breakdowns in certain
traditional institutions of social control have combined to place unprecedented pressures on
democratic authority. Forging a sovereign democratic will is becoming harder and harder,
and the need for practices and institutions that can underwrite citizens' authorship of
collective decisions and save democracy from becoming merely alienated preference
aggregation is ever increasing. This increase in the challenge of sovereign creation also
generates an increase in the necessary levels of democratic inertia and hence in the
prominence of democratic deficits. Although the argument here remains especially
speculative and impressionistic, this trend will generate an increase in the democratic
disobedience that necessarily accompanies even well-functioning democratic politics.
AFF:$Good$for$the$Law$ $ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$can$be$Justified$Under$Law.$
One suggestion is that the civil disobedient is entitled to avail of the necessity defense to
exempt himself. On this view, practitioners commit civil disobedience out of urgency and
with the view to preventing a more severe harm; this is a typical act of necessity. Thus, the
practitioners of civil disobedience can avail themselves of the necessity defense to get an
exemption of the punishment. A second suggestion is that the most important difference
between civil disobedience and crime lies in the motivation of the actor. Therefore, the
court can utilize the good motive defense to acquit the civil disobedient. A third suggestion is
to use the mistake of law defense to acquit the civil disobedient. If a defendant really believes
that a law is unconstitutional and consequently violates that law to obtain a chance to
challenge the law, the mistake of law defense should be available to the defendant. Indeed,
these suggestions work in some cases of civil disobedience. For example, the necessity defense
has been successfully adopted in several cases by the state courts of the United States.
!
AFF$$ There$is$a$Difference$Between$Civil$Disobedience$and$
Common$Crime.$
Both civil disobedience and common crimes involve violations of law, and very often
deliberate violations of law. Therefore, they look very similar under some circumstances.
Sometimes, it is not easy to draw a clear line between them because there are bound to be
difficult cases at the boundary. However, under most circumstances, there is no difficulty in
differentiating them. Their main difference lies in the motive. The common crimes are
generally committed because of such familiar motives as personal gain, malice and hate
etc., but civil disobedience is not undertaken out of selfishness (or at least not merely out of
selfishness); rather it seeks to enhance the common good through changes in the policies or
laws of the state. Perpetrators of civil disobedience believe that they are engaged in a noble
cause and they also believe that the public will eventually come to agree with them. On the
other hand, most criminals know what they are committing is not commendable and,
therefore, they rarely have the extravagant hope that people will view them as good
examples.
!
AFF$$ When$the$Laws$of$an$Imperfect$Democracy$Clash$With$an$
Ideal$Democracy,$There$is$No$Obligation$to$Follow$Those$
Rules.$
A question which may arise here is why we should be committed to imperfect democracy
at all since our final commitment is to the ideal democracy. The answer is that it is our
commitment to ideal democracy that requires us to do so. First of all, the law of the
imperfect democracy is possible to be in conflict with the ideal democracy, but, very often,
it is in line with the ideal. Therefore, we have an obligation to support it just as we have an
obligation to support the ideal democracy. Next, imperfect democracy is, with high
probability, the best means to actualize ideal democracy. So, we are committed to it is because
of its aim of realizing ideal democracy and because it may be the most effective way available to
us to achieve that aim. This is why we treat the imperfect democracy with respect. But our
respect to it is only conditional. When its laws and practices are in line with the ideal
democracy, we are obligated to obey them, but when its laws and practices are unnecessary
departures from the ideal democracy (the democratic and justice deficits), our obligation to it
also ends. In order to defend the ideal democracy cherished by us, we are entitled to adopt
appropriate means including both lawful means and civil disobedience, to address the
deficits.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Exposes$Injustices$That$Need$to$be$
Addressed.$
Civil disobedience, through its power of publicity, is also able to trigger a democratic
reengagement with issues that the status quo has kept off the political agenda. As Rawls
observes, by engaging in civil disobedience a minority can lead the majority to consider
whether they want to have their acts taken in this way, or whether, in view of the common
sense of justice, they wish to acknowledge the claims of the minority. In other words, civil
disobedience can help those causes that have been marginalized by political parties and are
unlikely to become part of the policy-making or legislative agenda. Realizing the problem is
the first step in addressing it. By dramatizing the problems of the society, civil disobedience
contributes significantly to the development of democracy. For example, when the United
States was formed, almost no one thought that women needed to be enfranchised; indeed, most
Americans at the time of the Revolution and for decades after thought that women were well
represented by men. It is only after the rise of the suffrage movement that Americans began to
realize that women were not satisfied with the status quo. Another good example is the
contemporary globalization movement which has introduced many new issues onto the
meeting agendas of world leaders. Though global movements are fiercely criticized for their
lack of a unified argument, a series of massive disobediences across the world in Seattle,
Bolivia, Washington, Prague, Quebec City, Genoa and Argentina have successfully placed
such topics as poverty, global inequality, job insecurity, and third world debt into the
political agenda of world leaders.
!
AFF$$ Citizens$Have$the$Responsibility$to$Follow$the$Law$Or$
Engage$in$Disobedience.$
$
Lefkowitz, David. "On a Moral Right to Civil Disobedience." Journal of Ethics. 2007. Web. 14
Sept. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/510694>.
Note, however, that the moral permissibility of continuing to contest a democratically

enacted law or policy by legal means or by suitably constrained civil disobedience is not
equivalent to, nor does it imply, that agents who would dispute the law are not morally
bound by it. A citizen of a liberal-democratic state, one that is assumed here to enjoy a
morally justied claim to political authority, does not enjoy a prerogative to disregard a
law or policy if she thinks it ought not to have been endorsed by a democratic majority. She
must either obey it or engage in suitably constrained civil disobedience; she may not act on
her own assessment of what morality requires or from self-interest or inclination where
acting from those motives would involve acting contrary to law. Thus on the view defended
here, a citizen of a liberal-democratic state is morally bound by its laws, though the
obligation is not the traditional duty to obey the law but rather the disjunctive duty to
obey the law or engage in civil disobedience. Not all forms of civil disobedience are morally
permissible, however. Rather, certain constraints on morally justiable civil disobedience
follow from the justication for an effective liberal-democratic states authority over its citizens,
together with an understanding of civil disobedience as essentially an act of political
communication or participation. Acts that fall within these constraints constitute what I label
public disobedience, and it is a moral right to engage in acts of this type that I aim to defend
here.
!
AFF$$ Political$Disobedience$Has$the$Power$to$Abolish$Unjust$
Laws$and$Promote$Equality.$
$
ers>.
The theory and practice of political disobedience came of age as an exercise in liberalism.
Governments, including democratic governments, treated citizens unequally and deprived
some citizens (and occasionally all citizens) of fundamental rights-for example, by writing
racism into law or restricting essential religious freedoms. Liberal protesters took aim at
these practices, including by disobedient methods, and liberal theorists developed an
account of the limits of the authority even of democratic governments that justified the
protesters' actions. In this way, discrimination and oppression were resisted, and equality
and rights promoted. Liberal disobedience is, in these ways, expressly democracy limiting,
and it is accordingly constrained from encroaching on democracy's legitimate terrain. The
liberal theory of disobedience therefore cannot explain cases-for example, involving nuclear
deterrence or the Vietnam War-in which political disobedience seems justified, even though the
policies it opposes fall within the scope of democratic political authority.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Crucial$to$the$Effectiveness$of$the$
Political$System.$
Hall, Matthew. "Guilty But Civilly Disobedient: Reconciling Civil Disobedience And The Rule
Of Law." Cardozo Law Review. 2007. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/28-5/28.5_Hall.pdf>.
Civil disobedience occupies a crucial, but precarious, role in our political system. The
philosophy of civil disobedience embodies the recognition that obligations beyond those of
the law might compel law breaking, but the doctrine steers that impulse toward a tightly-
cabined form of illegal protest nevertheless consistent with respect for the rule of law. As
such, civil disobedience serves as a firebreak between legal protest and rebellion, while
simultaneously providing a safety valve through which the profoundly disaffected can vent
dissent without resorting to more extreme means. Civil disobedience broadly benefits
society by liberating views divergent from the status quoin much the same manner as
free speech itselfand maximizing the prospect that a democratic society will correct its
mistakes, or at least reexamine intensely divisive decisions in a manner that assures
dissidents that they have been heard. Accordingly, in order for civil disobedience to succeed,
it must retain a sufficiently distinct moral status such that society as a whole respects its place in
the political order. If civil disobedience loses its clarity, if the sharp edges demarking the
firebreak deteriorate, civil disobedience fails in its role, loses its force, and erodes the rule of
law.
!
AFF$$ True$Forms$of$Civil$Disobedience$Are$Justified.$Civil$
Disobedience$is$Defined$as$a$Political$Protest$Over$an$
Unjust$Law$Or$Policy.$
Although definitions of civil disobedience abound, they generally concur on the

fundamental notion that it entails a conscientious violation of the law as a protest over an
unjust law or governmental policy and therefore, is morally justified. In order to craft a more
formal definition under the positive criminal law, a more preciseand elementaldefinition is
necessary. Therefore, this Article will approach civil disobedience generally as a political
protest over an unjust law or policy committed by violating law conscientiously, openly,
and nonviolently, with respect for the interests of others and with acceptance of
punishment.
AFF:$Positive$Societal$Impacts$ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Used$to$Solve$Environmental$
Problems$in$the$Status$Quo.$
In contemporary world, the tactic of civil disobedience is also widely used by the
environment activists. Environmental and forest demonstrations, with acts of civil
disobedience such as sit-ins, blockades, tree sits and forest occupations, have emerged in
the last decade, prompted by the continuing mass clear cuts and destruction of the forest
ecosystem and widespread environmental consequences. Today, most famous environment
organizations such as Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front have all
adopted civil disobedience as a way of publicizing their views and achieving their aims.
Actually, the tactic of civil disobedience is so widely recognized and used in environmental
movements that even the former vice-president of United States, Al Gore, called the people
to practice environmental civil disobedience.
!
AFF$$ Adhering$to$Rule$of$Law$Favors$the$Rich$and$Powerful$
and$Disregards$the$Poor.$
First of all, lawful means are distributed unfairly among the society. It is noticed by Brian
Martin that in todays democracy the lawful means are distributed unfairly and
disproportionately among the social members. The rich and the powerful obviously have
more channels to influence the laws and policies of the government. Many alleged lawful
means such as hiring lobbyists and engaging in a capital strike are clearly unavailable to the
poor. What makes this situation even worse is the fact that the lawful means mainly used by the
poor such as strikes and demonstrations are carefully scrutinized and often stigmatized, while
those actions taken by powerful groups often go unexamined. Jackie Esmonde also observed that
in existing democratic capitalist society, equality is only realized in its procedural meaning,
not its substantive meaning, so peoples participating rights and freedoms are always limited.
In such a situation in which people have disproportionate access to state power and law is
manipulated to maintain unequal social relations, disobedience may be the only avenue for those
without political power to press for change. In fact, it has been a very old technique for
dominant groups in society to defend their own interests by promoting a narrow
conception of acceptable protest, for example, by defining the lawful means in a limited
way or by requiring protests to be only to the government instead of directly to the rich
and powerful guys. To some degree, even the term protest itself is a reflection of bias because
it is generally applied to actions of groups that are painted as outside the mainstream; the actions
of the mainstream are rarely called protest. Therefore, the first trouble with legal channels is
that they are very limited and biased in favor of privileged groups. Totally restricting
protests to lawful means may be unfair for unprivileged members of society.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Does$Not$Result$in$a$Slippery$Slope$or$
Total$Anarchy.$
Another flaw of the slippery slope argument is that it falsely assumes that order in a
democratic society is totally dependent on state law. In fact, what holds society together is
not simply law but also the customs, moral codes, and the sentiments of the people. And a
breach of law is not something rare and unusual. We all break laws such as traffic regulations,
income tax laws, litter laws, prohibitions on gambling occasionally, even very often for some
people, but social order is not destroyed. There is no reason to think that when people break
the law in such cases, social order would be maintained as usual, whereas when it is the civil
disobedient who breaks the law, the social chaos would result. Conversely, if properly guided,
civil disobedience can enhance the social cohesion by serving as a safety valve. So it is
unlikely that social chaos would result just because some laws are broken by the civil
disobedient.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Protects$Human$Dignity.$
Civil disobedience also enhances self-respect and the dignity of the person which are
valuable to the functioning of democracy. Democracy is based on the assumption that as
independent beings with the capacity to make up their own minds, individuals are the best
judges of their own interests. As such, they should neither be arrogant, nor easily subdued
by injustice. In other words, it is vital to protect the conscience and dignity of the person.
!
AFF$$ Most$Cases$of$Civil$Disobedience$Are$Justified$Under$a$
Consequential$Framework.$
This is a utilitarian view according to which civil disobedience must be assessed solely by
reference to its utility or disutility in producing social changes. The overall consequences are
what really matter. On this view, unsuccessful civil disobedience, i.e. civil disobedience which
fails to or is unlikely to produce positive changes, is unjustified disobedience. This view, no
doubt, has an element of truth. It helps to remind the civil disobedient that he needs to
establish a relationship between act and consequence such that the latter provides adequate
grounds for the former. The consequences of the disobedience are not known, of course, until
after the act has been committed, but the civil disobedient must keep in mind that the
probable consequences play an essential part in the determination of whether to engage in
disobedience; after all, he is not taking action for actions sake but pursuing some practical aims.
But against Macfarlanes view, I wish to suggest that even when the civil disobedience does
not have or is unlikely to have its intended social or political consequences; it might still be
justified because of its other potential effects.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Allows$Citizens$to$Engage$in$the$Most$
Inclusive$Forms$of$Collective$Action.$
$
In sum, I contend that adequate recognition of the moral right to political participation
encompasses a moral right to public disobedience. While the moral necessity of collective
action requires that at some point an action-guiding settlement be reached regarding the
form collective action ought to take, such settlements almost inevitably impose an arbitrary
end to debate and deliberation on this matter. The acknowledgment of each agents claim
to a voice in settling disputes over the design of morally necessary collective-action schemes
requires that debate be permitted to continue, though the state is also morally justied in
acting on the basis of the decision reached when the initial deliberation is brought to a
close. The inclusion of public disobedience among the morally permissible methods for
continuing debate rests on instrumental considerations regarding the best set of norms for
regulating collective decision-making mechanisms, including norms designed to reect the
depth of an agents conviction on a particular issue and to enhance the rapid dissemination of
various views by those (including most citizens) who have little control over the media.
!
AFF$$ In$the$Era$of$Globalization,$Civil$Disobedience$is$
Becoming$More$Important.$
$
ers>.
Furthermore, although here I am only speculating, democratic disobedience appears

nowadays to be growing in importance. Certainly, the most prominent disobedient protest
movement in the developed world today-the movement against economic, political, and
cultural globalization that erupts from time to time at the seats of the new global orderl6-
suggests this trend. The liberal justification of political disobedience is clearly inapplicable
in this case, because the policies of international coordination and exchange that the
antiglobalization movement protests cannot plausibly be cast as violating basic liberal
principles of equality or individual freedom but instead fall squarely within the range of
democratic authority, at least on the republican view. The model of democratic
disobedience, by contrast, seems well suited to defending the antiglobalization protests,
which self-consciously present themselves as arising against the backdrop of an enormous
gap between the official [political] parties and what people want.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Has$the$Power$to$Shed$Light$on$
Various$Atrocities.$
Dillard, Courtney L. "Civil Disobedience: A Case Study in Factors of Effectiveness." Society &
Animals. 2002. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://animalsplatform.org/assets/library/449_s1015.pdf>.
Such changes perhaps are most notable in surveying the activities of social movement
organizations in the last two decades. The 1980s witnessed not only major ideological shifts
from welfare to rights but also tactical shifts from behind-the-scenes negotiation in the
courtroom or legislative bodies to very public acts of protest and civil disobedience. As the
media, particularly television quickly became an essential part of educating and
persuading the public on animal issues, tactics that gained media coverage were often
employed. Because one of the enduring news values is controversy and conflict (Stephens,
1980), the potential for acts of civil disobedience often ensured media attention. Today,
some activists and organizations wholly embrace the use of civil disobedience. Whether its
members of a national group trespassing on corporate property in order to disrupt
stockholder meetings or members of local organizations trying to block access to fur salons,
thousands of protestors have used civil disobedience to make their point. Yet, even as
activists participate in civil disobedience to reveal particular atrocities against animals and
encourage a public conversation about the nonhuman-human animal relationship,
questions as to the effectiveness of these activities continually arise within the overarching
movement. Some organizations, often those seeking more moderate gains and focusing on
key political or business groups, believe that civil disobedience reduces the movements
legitimacy and makes their advocacy much more difficult. They argue that those in power
do not make distinctions between animal groups and therefore every organization is
associated with, and penalized for, publicized acts of civil disobedience. Activists in support
of civil disobedience often respond to these arguments by suggesting that civil disobedience
sheds light on important issues and stimulates public response. Many of these activists
believe that media cover-age is the key to movement success.
!
AFF$$ Effective$Civil$Disobedience$Can$Revitalize$the$Public$
Sphere.$$
Whatever the methodology, the issue of effectiveness is an important one. Although there can
be no doubt that negotiation, legislation, and litigation are vital tools for activists, there is a
power in the public nature of civil disobedience. This power comes from the intensity of
conscience that civil disobedience allows the public to see on the part of the activists. Civil
disobedience can be an empowering activity for both activists and the general public. Activists
join together and publicly advocate their position. The general public witnesses commitments
and challenges to the system that extend beyond the voting booth and individual consumer
choices. When civil disobedience is truly effective, it can change societys relationship to
animals and even revitalize our public sphere.
!
AFF$$ In$a$Democratic$System,$Civil$Disobedience$Will$Not$
Result$in$Instability.$$
The elements of justified civil disobedience depend enormously on the social context of the
protest. The concept of disobedience poses no dilemma under an illegitimate regime because
no duty of obedience pertains. Further, even under a democracy resting on popular
sovereignty, conditions may deteriorate so badly that revolution is justified. Therefore, the
interesting question is whether individuals may disobey particular laws in a basically just society
where citizens accept the legitimacy of the government and abide by a general obligation to obey
the laws. Indeed, John Rawls contends that a theory of civil disobedience makes sense only
in the special case of a nearly just society, one that is well-ordered for the most part but in
which some serious violations of justice nevertheless do occur. In a system of near justice,
civil disobedience does not challenge the legitimacy of the government. Instead; it
constitutes protest to a particular law or policy. The issue is whether citizens fundamentally
opposed to that law or policy possesses only two options: lawful protest coupled with
obedience, or rebellion. The philosophy of civil disobedience asserts that a middle ground
exists when lawful protest fails. Advocates of civil disobedience believe that, in a state of
near justice, disobedients can navigate this perilous middle ground because their limited
acts of defiance pose only a negligible threat to society and, further, that the danger
diminishes if the disobedients act with respect for others and for the rule of law. The basic
claim is that a system of near justice is stable enough to tolerate this constrained form of
disobedience. Indeed, Rawls goes so far as to state that forbearance
for civil disobedience constitutes a crucial test case for any theory of the moral basis of
democracy.
AFF:$Necessary$for$Political$Change$ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Promotes$Political$Participation,$
Which$is$Key$to$a$Democracy.$
Since democracy means the existence of a government of the people, by the people and
for the people, citizen participation is vital. So for democracy to function well there must be a
spirit of participation among the people. If the participation rate is too low, not only will the
function of democracy be damaged but its legitimacy will be threatened. Civil disobedience,
like legal protest, is able to encourage citizens to take part in the democratic processes.
!
AFF$$ Civil$disobedience$empowers$Oppressed$Minorities.$
This fact can be vividly explained by the experiences of African-Americans. James Lawson
pointed out, African-Americans, because of their miserable experiences and inferior social
status, for many years, have hated themselves rather than turning their hatred,
vindictiveness and ill will against white men. Because of that, they have developed an inverted
violence, a depreciated and rejected selfhood. But during the civil rights movement these
same people could hold up their heads with justifiable pride, working collectively to solve
racial problems. A nonviolent movement can do something to the hearts and minds of those
committed to it: It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and
courage they did not know they had. After the movement, African-Americans had a new
sense of courage and self-confidence.
!
AFF$$ The$Suffrage$of$the$Civil$Disobedient$is$Key$to$Gaining$
Support.$
The answer given by many philosophers and practitioners of civil disobedience is suffering.
The voluntary suffering of the civil disobedients is a great catalyst to win them sympathy,
belief and support. Thus P. T. Sorokin can write about love begetting love, while King can
insist that unmerited suffering is always redemptive. But the most ardent supporter of the belief
that suffering can melt the hearts of the people was Gandhi. He was convinced that the success
of the civil disobedients lies in their willingness to suffer and to be arrested and imprisoned,
rather than in their endeavors to avoid imprisonment. According to his view, even if there is
but a single unarmed policeman, civil disobedients should surrender to him instead of
running away. The triumph of the civil disobedients consists in thousands being led to the
prisons like lambs to the slaughter houseIf the lambs of the world had been willingly led,
they would have long ago saved themselves from the butchers knife. Our triumph consists in
being imprisoned for no wrong whatever. The greater our innocence, the greater our strength
and the swifter our victory. Success is the certain result of suffering of the extremist
character, voluntarily undergone.
!
AFF$$ Even$if$Civil$Disobedience$Fails,$it$is$Necessary$for$Social$
Change.$
In fact, civil disobedience has other instrumental value other than inducing the changes of
laws and policies. For example, even when it fails to bring about any change, it still can give
the participants a stake in the system and a sense of power and belonging. For Johan Galtung,
when there is a conflict in society, there are two needs that must be dealt with. These are
the instrumental needs of resolving the conflict and the expressive needs of the participants.
An act may be said to be instrumental to the extent that it has the function of contributing
to conflict resolution, and it may be said to be expressive to the extent that it serves the
function of tension release from the latent intensity. Either way, it contributes to an easing of
the conflict. So even when it fails to contribute to a final resolution of the conflict by bringing
about social changes, civil disobedience might still moderate the conflict by satisfying the
participants need for expression. Seen in this light, it is unreasonable to consider all civil
disobedience that fails to bring about social change as unjustified. Inducing social change is
not the only value of civil disobedience; even its failure might have worthwhile
consequences for its practitioners.
!
AFF$$ Nonviolent$Challenges$to$Power$Can$Act$as$Effective$
Political$Communication.$
$
Calabrese, Andrew. "Virtual Nonviolence? Civil Disobedience And Political Violence In The
Information Age." Emerald Group Publishing. 2004. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/Calabrese%20(civl%20dis).pdf>.
Nonviolent challenges to state power are an honored tradition in Western history, and so
is their repression, with origins tracing back as far as the trial and conviction of Socrates
on trumped-up charges of blaspheming the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. Katz
(1985, p. 915; see also Columbia Law Review, 1968, pp. 1109-17) characterizes as the principal
aim of nonviolent civil disobedients in modern times to communicate to others their concern
over some social evil, and for this reason they desire publicity, particularly in the form of press
coverage, of their actions. Civil disobedience is, rst and foremost, the public expression of the
politics of shame. To shine light on injustice usually means exposing and embarrassing
those who perpetuate it. And that can be a dangerous thing, not only for those who are
shamed, but also for those who would use the means of publicity in such a manner. That is
why acts of civil disobedience are often correctly understood to be acts of courage. The
right, and what for some is the duty, of nonviolent civil disobedience is a major focus of this
essay. How is it possible to break the law and be civil? And why might one choose to do so?
To convey objections to an injustice by breaking the law while doing it in what is generally
accepted to be a civil manner is to commit an act of civil disobedience. It is also an act of
political communication. I review the idea both to demonstrate its continued relevance, and
as a preface to considering its uses and interpretation as an information-age strategy of
political activism. I also argue for the need to distinguish the idea of civil disobedience from
other forms of political activism.
!
AFF$$ Nonviolent$Civil$Disobedience$is$Justified$as$a$Form$of$
Speech$That$Creates$Public$Discussion.$
$
Calabrese, Andrew. "Virtual Nonviolence? Civil Disobedience And Political Violence In The
Information Age." Emerald Group Publishing. 2004. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/Calabrese%20(civl%20dis).pdf>.
The tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience has tended to be justied as a form of

speech, or expression as symbolic action and has not been treated simply as criminal
conduct. What the civil disobedient person depends on is that his or her actions will
generate meaning beyond the mere fact of breaking a law and being punished for it, and
instead that these actions will form the basis of a public discussion about a question of
injustice. Furthermore, it is for this reason because civil disobedience is an act of public
communication that those who perform such actions are accorded a different, sometimes
elevated, status in the criminal justice system. In granting special status to those who
deliberately break a law in order to provoke a discussion about questions of justice, we
have recognized civil disobedience as a special form of speech or expression. But while
expression is intrinsic to an act of civil disobedience, such acts are also judged as conduct,
for example, trespassing on restricted property while protesting. However, in recognizing
the primacy of the expressive content of the action, we accept not only that the speech-
conduct dichotomy is sometimes not as clear as is supposed, but also that the scale we use
to judge such speech-actions will tend to privilege the speech element. As Ledewitz points
out, because speech and conduct are so intertwined in an act of civil disobedience, to issue
an injunction against the act would imply imposing a prior restraint on free speech.
Ledewitz (1990, pp. 122-4) explains from within the framework of American jurisprudence that
punishing a civil disobedient for a minor criminal offense after the fact is not a betrayal of the
spirit of the First Amendment, while enjoining a would-be civil disobedient prior to such action,
when there is no clear risk of harm to the public, dees that spirit.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Consists$of$Deliberate$Disobedience$
for$the$Purpose$of$Creating$Change.$
Civil disobedience, as I will understand it here, consists in deliberate disobedience to one or

more laws of a state for the purpose of advocating a change to that states laws or policies.
Though quite capacious, this denition of civil disobedience excludes nonpolitical
disobedience (i.e., common crimes), as well as several categories of politically motivated
disobedience. For instance, it distinguishes civil disobedience from revolution, which aims to
replace the existing state with a new one and not merely to modify some of the existing states
laws or policies. It also distinguishes civil disobedience from conscientious objection, which
does not include as an essential element the advocacy of change to some law or policy, but
only the claim (or perhaps better, the plea) that the agent should be exempt from having to
obey a certain law or comply with a particular policy. Moreover, this denition is morally
neutral; whether and when agents are morally permitted (or even required) to engage in
civil disobedience remains an open question.
!
AFF$$ An$Acceptance$of$Arrest$by$Individuals$Practicing$Civil$
Disobedience$is$Acceptance$of$the$Dominant$Paradigm$
and$Prevents$Radical$Social$Change.$
$
Regarding the second strand of civil disobedience theory, some theorists assume that civil
disobedients consider the prevailing system as reasonably just and accordingly seek
limited reform, not radical change. This interpretation might seem to explain why civil
disobedients accept arrest and punishment: their submission signifies acceptance of the
prevailing system and acknowledges a moral obligation to obey the law. I argue that this
view of civil disobedients is historically untenable. The issue might seem to turn
uninterestingly on how civil disobedience is delimited by theorists. In everyday speech, any
principled disobedience to law may be counted as civil disobedience. But theorists often
define it narrowly, distinguishing civil disobedience from other forms of principled
noncompliance with law, and they may have perfectly good reason to do so. But when
theorists regard as civil disobedience only acts of individuals who accept the prevailing
system (and presumably recognize an obligation to comply with its laws), they impute such
an outlook to paradigm practitioners of civil disobedience, such as Henry David Thoreau,
Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The result is a false picture of historically
significant resistance.
!
AFF$$ Modern$Civil$Disobedience$Transcends$the$Liberal$Model$
and$Focuses$on$Instances$of$Illegitimate$Political$
Authority.$
ers>.
Not all political disobedience may plausibly be cast, therefore, as following the liberal model
and protecting fundamental rights to liberty and equality. And actual cases of political
disobedience that fall outside of the liberal model do exist. Indeed, the civil rights
movement-and the rights revolution more generally-represented the heyday of liberal
disobedience. In the subsequent years, the most prominent cases of political disobedience
have increasingly not emphasized liberal rights to equal treatment or to basic liberties. This
trend away from liberal disobedience figured in the protests against the Vietnam War. It
also appeared in protests against nuclear weapons, especially in Europe-including the cases in the
1980s that Dworkin had expressly in mind when he worried about the justification of civil
disobedience that is based on prudence rather than rights. Finally (although here I am only
speculating), the trend is perhaps reaching maturity in the most prominent cases of political
disobedience in the United States and Europe today, which arise in connection with
protests against globalization. These protests are increasingly difficult to cast as liberal
efforts to protect fundamental rights against overreaching governments. Although the
Vietnam War may have been unwise and even wicked, the decision to wage a war to rid a
foreign nation of a hostile and repressive regime plausibly falls within the scope of a
democratic government's political authority. Although the aggressive deployment of nuclear
missiles, including American missiles, in Europe may have been reckless, the decision to deploy
them in order to deter attack by hostile neighbors probably falls within the scope of a democratic
government's political authority. And although policies that support multinational corporate
enterprises and remove national barriers to trade may be unappealing, they certainly fall within
!
the scope of a democratic government's political authority. Political disobedience in protest of
these policies therefore becomes increasingly difficult to justify by reference to liberal ideas
about the limits of democracy, and efforts to explain or defend such disobedience must
proceed outside the liberal model. I speculate later that such cases-which cannot be fit into
the liberal model-represent the future of political disobedience. But however that may be,
the examples that I have given emphasize that disobedient protest that pursues ends
besides the vindication of liberal rights is becoming the dominant form of political
disobedience, at least in developed, democratic states. The political culture of these states
therefore presents a challenge today much like the one that confronted the lawyers and
philosophers who constructed the liberal theory of political disobedience four decades ago.
An important form of political engagement, which is experienced as legitimate by those
who participate in it, cannot be understood through the prevailing theoretical accounts of
legal and political authority.
AFF:$Morally$Permissible$ $ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Citizens$Have$a$Moral$Right$to$Engage$in$Civil$
Disobedience,$Even$if$Such$Acts$Ultimately$Fail.$
$
Whichever one of these two accounts of the nature of the reason provided by a duty to
obey the law we choose, both show such a duty to be compatible in principle with civil
disobedience, at least under certain conditions. That is, each account shows that citizens
can act rightly when they commit an act of civil disobedience, in the sense that they act on
an undefeated moral reason. In what follows, however, I argue for a stronger claim, namely,
that citizens of a state with a justied claim to political authority have a moral right to
commit civil disobedience (or, more precisely, a moral right to a suitably constrained form of
civil disobedience which I label public disobedience). If correct, this claim entails that citizens
act within their moral rights when they commit an act of public disobedience, even when in
doing so they fail to act rightly. To use a common but contentious phrase, a moral right to
public disobedience consists in a right to do wrong.
!
AFF$$ The$Moral$Right$to$Political$Participation$Guarantees$
Citizens$the$Right$to$Change$Policy$Through$
Disobedience.$
$
As I noted in the previous paragraph, that a state is democratic does not sufce to justify its
claim to political legitimacy. In addition, the state must be a liberal one, by which I mean
that it must manifest a principled commitment to respect for individuals basic rights.15
Individual rights designate the limits of the compromises it is reasonable for any agent, including
the state, to demand of people regarding their freedom to pursue what they believe to be the good
life. Therefore, suitably motivated agents could reasonably reject the authority of any state that
did not, as a liberal state does, eschew on principle the deliberate or negligent violation of
individual rights. Thus being liberal and democratic are jointly sufcient as a justication
for a states claim to political authority over its citizens and a correlative duty on their part
to obey the law. As I argued in the previous section, a legal order constitutes a collective-
action scheme through which individuals can coordinate and/ or cooperate in order to
fulll their natural duties to see to it that all enjoy their basic moral rights. Yet reasonable
disagreement over the form collective action ought to takethat is, over what the law
ought to beis practically inevitable. Only a minimally democratic decision procedure
provides a mechanism for settling these disputes that cannot be reasonably rejected or,
what is the same, treats each person with a duty to participate in the scheme with the
respect due to him or her as an autonomous agent. A minimally democratic decision
procedure is an institutional response to two competing moral demands. On the one hand, there
are the justiable claims of those whose proper moral treatment requires collective action, which
make up (one of) the ends of a justied modern state. On the other hand, there are the reasonable
claims of various individuals regarding the specication of those ends and the morally best or
most efcient means to their realization. Responding to the former in a timely manner may
!
require that ofcial deliberation come to a close, say, with the taking of a vote, so that some
collective action can take place. Yet oftentimes those who nd themselves in the minority when
such a vote occurs may justiably complain that, had there been further time for debate and
deliberation, or had they enjoyed greater resources for the dissemination of their arguments, their
own (reasonable) views might have won majority support. In recognition of this fact, the moral
right to political participation should be understood to give rise to two more specic moral
rightsone a right to participate in the decision process itself, say by casting a vote in a
majority rule procedure, and one a right to continue to contest the decision reached by
such a process after the fact by a variety of means, including suitably constrained civil
disobedience.
!
AFF$$ A$Moral$Right$to$Civil$Disobedience$Allows$Citizens$to$
Correct$for$Instances$of$Inequality.$
$
Still, even if there are certain advantages to employing civil disobedience rather than
relying on only legal means of political participation to advocate for ones own conception
of what the law ought to be, why think that these advantages provide a justication for a
moral right to civil disobedience? Why is it not just tough luck for the agentswho nd
themselves in the minority with respect to the adoption of a given law or policy when a
democratic decision procedure concludes? The answer is that the best understanding of the
moral right to political participation is one that reduces as much as possible the degree to
which it is a matter of luck whether one attracts majority support for ones reasonable
views regarding what justice requires, consistent with the ability of the state to achieve
those ends that provide a moral justication for its existence and authority. That is, respect
for agents moral right to political participation requires that potential barriers to their
effective exercise of this right be diminished as much as possible, given the aforementioned
constraint. In light of this understanding of what respect for agents moral right to political
participation involves, an account of that right as including both a moral right to legal means of
participation, such as voting, and a moral right to civil disobedience, as explicated in this
article, ought to be preferred to an account that includes only the former right.
!
AFF$$ Moral$Forms$of$Civil$Disobedience$Require$Some$Limits$
and$Compromises$Concerning$the$Legal$System.$
$
It should now be clear why the claim that one has a moral right to public disobedience
need not count as a criticism of the state for outlawing the action in question. Agents should
recognize that given the moral necessity of collective action, some settlement must be
reached. Further, they should recognize that this entails the necessity of some limits on the
form that political debate and deliberation may normally take. So though they disobey the
law, citizens of a legitimate state can consistently believe that the existing legal system is the
morally best compromise between the need to act and the need to accommodate continued
debate among citizens over the form collective action ought to take. Indeed, given the
advantages of public disobedience with respect to the publicizing of ones views and the
strength of ones conviction, it seems plausible to think that suitably motivated agents
concerned to identify the morally best norms for regulating reasonable disagreements over
how to act collectively could not reasonably reject a set that encompasses a moral right to
public disobedience.
!
AFF$$ An$Endorsement$of$Civil$Disobedience$Does$Not$
Downgrade$the$Importance$of$Moral$Truth.$$
$
One potential source of resistance to the recognition of a liberty right to advocate

reasonable but false views regarding the requirements of justice stems from the concern
that such a right will downgrade the importance of moral truth in politics or even expunge
it altogether. It may seem that as long as agents advocate a reasonable conception of
justice, they need not be concerned with whether their beliefs are true. But a liberty right
to advocate for reasonable views of justice does not entail this conclusion. All agents have a
duty to determine as best they can what morality requires of them, both individually and
collectively. It follows from this, rst, that agents must sincerely believe that the reasonable
conception of justice they advocate is true. Agents do not enjoy a liberty to advocate a
reasonable conception of justice they believe is false but more advantageous to them
personally than a different reasonable conception of justice they believe is true. Second, an
agents liberty right to advocate a reasonable conception of justice she sincerely, though
mistakenly, believes to be true does not free her from the demand that she seek to reduce
the burdens of judgment whenever possible or that she continue to engage in discussion
with others in an attempt to pierce the epistemic fog imposed by the burdens of
judgment.59 That is, the agent must manifest a commitment to the pursuit of truth, not to mere
reasonableness, even if oftentimes the latter may be the best creatures like us can do and
therefore the most we may expect of her.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Does$Not$Require$Moral$Obligation$
Because$There$is$No$Moral$Obligation$to$Obey$the$Law.$$
$
Our philosophical literature on civil disobedience is largely a product of the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Responding to critics of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements,
philosophers argued that unlawful protest can sometimes be justified. For a number of
these writers, justifying civil disobedience means overcoming a serious moral objection.
They assume we have a moral obligation to obey the law-in other words, political
obligation.' Regarding this first strand of civil disobedience theory, I argue that the
assumption of political obligation is morally untenable. Political obligation has recently
received close philosophical scrutiny, which reveals that various arguments for it are
exceedingly problematic. These criticisms do not address the grievances of civil
disobedients. My strategy is different. I propose a moral condition for political obligation,
and I argue that this condition is clearly violated in paradigmatic cases of civil
disobedience. As a consequence, we cannot assume civil disobedience requires moral
justification, because we cannot assume there is a moral obligation to obey the law.
!
AFF$$ If$Laws$Are$Unjust,$Individuals$Engaging$in$Civil$
Disobedience$Require$No$Justification.$
$
Theorists who do not explicitly endorse political obligation may assume that civil
disobedience is morally problematic and requires moral justification. If they do not
suppose that obedience to law requires justification, they assume a moral obligation to obey
the law. This can be seen as follows. Civil disobedience may be understood broadly, as
principled nonviolent disobedience to law. But theorists commonly understand it narrowly,
as, say, public protest aimed as persuading others that a law or governmental policy is
morally indefensible and must be changed, performed by someone who respects the
prevailing system and willingly suffers the legal consequences of disobedience. On either a
broad or narrow definition, the properties of civil disobedience other than disobedience to
law are, and are regarded as, morally unobjectionable. The only plausible explanation for
this set of views-that nonviolent civil disobedience requires justification but obedience to law
does not-is a moral presumption favoring obedience to law (political obligation). I say
moral presumption because political obligation is reasonably understood by theorists to
be defeasible, not absolute. If it exists, moral justification is required for disobedience to
law. Theorists commonly assume that adequate justification may be available, in which
case political obligation is outweighed. It seems reasonable to suppose that just laws merit
respect. But the same cannot be said of unjust laws. Because political obligation argues for
obedience to both just and unjust laws and unjust laws do not automatically merit respect,
theorists understand that political obligation itself requires justification. There may be
sound arguments for political obligation, but they would be limited by the principles they invoke.
Consent principles, for example, apply when, but only when, there is genuine consent.
!
AFF$$ Moral$Justification$is$Not$Required$When$Laws$Reflect$a$
Systemic$Deficit$in$Democracy.$
$
But how could philosophers of good will have assumed that moral justification was
required to disobey laws supporting chattel slavery, racist colonialism, or Jim Crow? If I
am right in regarding that assumption as morally indefensible, then we must entertain the
possibility of a systematic defect in the moral framework that obtained. The judgment of
those of us who took political obligation for granted-despite the obvious existence of
intolerable, deeply entrenched, systematic injustice against clearly identified groups within
our society-was distorted by inadequate sensitivity to the palpable impact of the
oppression, especially on those of color.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Forces$Onlookers$to$Consider$the$
Morality$Behind$Actions.$
$
Heidi Prescott, present director of The Fund, believes that civil disobedience is an
effective form of direct action for a number of reasons. In an interview, she explained that
civil disobedience is an excellent component of any campaign against specific abuses. She
stated that it is important to try to work through the system initially, attempting to
negotiate as The Fund had in the courts and the legislature. It is only when these channels
resist or reject what the group considers to be a plea for justice that civil disobedience is
used as a tactic. Prescott believes that the greatest bene.t of civil disobedience is the
heightened awareness of the issue by the general public, most often through the media. She
argues that acts of disobedience send a message that something is so wrong that people are
willing to risk their safety and freedom to stop that injustice. Because people know in their
heart of hearts that it [the shooting of the pigeons] is wrong, acts of civil disobedience call
forth emotion and force people to consider the morality of the event (H. Prescott, personal
communication, October 25, 1996).
!
AFF$$ It$is$Morally$Necessary$to$End$an$Unjust$Law,$Especially$if$
Such$a$Law$Exists$in$an$Unideal$Democracy.$
$
But Hook is not an absolutist; he admits that "it may be morally necessary to disobey an
unjust law; even if this leads to revolution; but one ought not call himself a democrat while
doing this." Of this argument Carl Cohen writes: Its plausibility arises from the conviction that
where there are two ways of achieving the same objective, one lawful and the other not, the
unlawful procedure (other things being equal) could not be justifiable. This is true enough as
far as it goes, but all too often other things are not equal. Evil and oppressive laws do get enacted
in the best of democracies (such as the Alien and Sedition Act, the Fugitive Slave Law, early
anti-labor legislation, and many more recent and therefore more controversial items); it may be
impossible or too time consuming to achieve redress in the approved manner; corruption, official
lack of interest, and a large list of other factors might nullify the alleged benefits of legal
channels for change. It is often just because attempts for change within the law have been
thwarted or blocked that the civil disobedient is prompted to his action. These three
arguments have great initial plausibility, and, despite the important difficulties just
analyzed, some residual persuasiveness. They are all three, however, based on a serious
misconception about the nature of democracy, about what it is and ought to be. They fudge
over a crucial distinction and only achieve plausibility in that way. There is yet a third way
in which 'democracy' may be used. This is in the sense of government which seeks to
actualize ideal democracy and see itself as a yet imperfect attempt in that direction. This I
will label imperfect democracy. Such democracies are imperfect attempts at actualizing
ideal democracy. To that end they adopt certain means. Among the more notable are free
elections (governed by the principle of majority rule) and the various guarantees of liberty
associated with a bill of rights. This is important. The ideals which an imperfect democracy is
trying to realize determine the means it uses in that attempt; in other words, these ideals, to
!
a large extent, determine the structure of imperfect democracies. It is by reference to these
ideals that we can explain why such democracies are characterized by free elections, by a
commitment to government by consent, and by all the protections of individual liberty and
integrity which are often taken to be the external distinguishing characteristics of
democracies. Why ought major political and social decisions to be decided by elections?
One important answer to this question is that this mode of decision making is the one most
consistent with a thorough-going commitment to human equality: everyone has an equal
voice in the making of decisions. Government by consent of the individual is consistent with
and demanded by a true and honest respect for the dignity and integrity of the individual. To rule
a person without his consent is to use him as a pawn and is to deny his right to make and act
upon his moral decisions. A commitment to liberty without guarantees for that liberty would be a
weak and inconsequential commitment.
AFF:$Differs$From$Other$Types$of$Action$ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Simple$Protest$Does$Not$Meet$the$Standards$for$Civil$
Disobedience.$
In a democracy, citizens enjoy the rights of protest. The rights of protest can be expressed
in demonstrations, strikes, parades, petitioning, public debates, and direct appeals to the
media, and so on. Legal protest has a great deal in common with civil disobedience, in that
both civil disobedience and legal protest are public responses to a certain situation created by law
or policy which the protesters feel harmful either to them or to the society. And they are both
committed to justice and serve the laws need for growth and reform. But, legal protest and
civil disobedience also have significant differences. The key difference is that civil
disobedience involves breaking the law, while legal protest does not. Civil disobedience is a
protest beyond the legal system which requires laws to be broken. That is to say, violation of
law is an essential part of civil disobedience, without which civil disobedience will cease to
exist. But legal protest is a protest within the legal system which requires citizens to exercise
their rights of protest in accordance with the law. In fact, this difference is a reflection of the
protestors different attitudes towards the existing legal system. The legal protestors still
believe that injustices and departures against which they are protesting can be cured in the
legal system itself by resorting to the legal channels provided by it, whereas the civil
disobedient is more pessimistic who considers that the legal means are either unavailable to
them or ineffective. It is believed that on the continuum of protest civil disobedience lies in the
middle. One end of the continuum of protest is legal protest, and the other end is rebellion.
Legal protest is protected by law and is not considered as an infraction to the law, while
civil disobedience represents only a limited respect for the law.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Different$Than$Rebellion.$
In the first place, rebellion has no respect for the existing political system and authority. A
rebellion usually occurs when there is an extreme disparity between the expectations of the
rebelling group and the actual situation. When an extreme disparity occurs, the rebel group
does not recognize the existing laws of the state any more and, instead, it seeks to overthrow the
government or change the constitutional arrangements. In other words, it contemplates the
wholesale destruction of the state, that is, the entire system by which law is made,
interpreted, and administered. Nevertheless, civil disobedience is not an effort to overthrow
the government. It only seeks reform the political order from within. In the second place, the
means of resistance used by rebel groups are far more violent and aggressive than those of
civil disobedience; they are not necessarily limited to nonviolence. These means might take the
form of terrorism, armed struggle, or political protest of various types. The act of rebellion is
often accompanied by great loss, both in terms of lives and in terms of property. And its
practitioners have no wish to receive punishment; rather they do their best to escape it. On the
contrary, civil disobedience is much more restricted. It must be predominantly non-violent and
take into account the interests of others. Finally, rebellion indicates an organized opposition to
the government and its laws. Therefore, rebellion is always committed by a mass which is
organized to some degree, whilst civil disobedience can be committed both collectively and
individually. Actually, most cases of civil disobedience are individual civil disobedience, not
mass civil disobedience.
!
AFF$$ There$is$an$Important$Difference$Between$Civil$
Disobedience$and$Terrorism.$
The first difference between civil disobedience and terrorism is their attitudes towards the
existing political system. The civil disobedient believes that only part of the system goes
wrong and its faults can be redressed within the existing system. However, terrorists do not
necessarily hold such views. Typical terrorists believe that the existing system is better to
be toppled than retained. That is to say, terrorists have much less respect for the existing
system and the authorities. But it deserves to point out here that the political motivation
behind the terrorism is very complex. Some terrorist groups are motivated by more or less
just causes such as getting independence from foreign rule, fighting for more freedom, and
so on. It is inappropriate to blindly deny all motivations of terrorism as unjustifiable
merely because it shows less respect for the existing system.
!
AFF$$ Political$Participation$Negates$the$Right$to$Civil$
Disobedience.$
Last but not least, even if consent exists it still does not mean that one has to abide by the
final outcome. Consent is considered the most typical, undisputable source of obligations.
Many have assumed that success in demonstrating that the laws subjects have consented to obey
it would serve to justify the duty to obey firmly and decisively. But this is not true at all times
because occasionally other elements have to be taken into account. In other words, from the
point of view of democratic theory those who participate in a procedure must accept its
results; however, from the broader standpoint of political morality in general, this is only
one factor to be taken into account in deciding how to act. For example, some German
soldiers may have had participated in the formulation of Nazis policies such as
annihilation of Jews during the Second World War, but this does not mean that they must
loyally follow such policies. If some of them had chosen to save rather than kill the Jews,
this breach of German policies would have been an act worthy of praise, not condemnation.
As in personal relations, breaking instead of adhering to former promises sometimes is more
praiseworthy. Giving up a promise to kill someone in revenge generally is an act in the
right direction. Therefore, even we agree that participating in a procedure means that one
has consented to the procedure still does not mean that one is under an absolute obligation
to obey its outcome. It only means that other things being equal one is obligated to obey the
outcome. But when other things are not equal, it should be balanced against other elements. That
is to say, the obligation incurred by participating in the procedure is a significant
consideration which should never be ignored. However, it may sometimes be overridden. In
conclusion, the existence of rights of participation does not dissolve the need for civil
disobedience. It might require stronger reasons for engaging in civil disobedience, but there
is still space for civil disobedience to be justified under some circumstances.
!
AFF$$ Legitimate$Forms$of$Civil$Disobedience$Can$Include$
Violence.$
$
Parker, Kelly. "Takin' It to the Streets: Hare and Madden on Civil Disobedience." Indiana
University Press. 2010. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/TRA.2010.46.1.35>.
What constitutes an act of civil disobedience may then run quite counter to our common
conceptions: in certain cases, legitimate acts of civil disobedience may involve violent
transgression of a just law by persons who seek to escape punishment for their actions.
Hare and Madden indicate that such tactics could be legitimate, if properly limited and
directed specifically to exert pressure that is likely to change an unjust situation. In a world
that knows both indiscriminate killing by suicide bombers, on the one hand, and a highly
idealized memory of Kings non-violent direct action, on the other, this conclusion brings us up
short. The question of the moral justification for civil disobedience is of first importance. Hare
and Madden consider this issue at some length. They identify two kinds of justification that have
traditionally been offered. The first is the Higher Law doctrine, which asserts that Gods law
takes precedence over civil law whenever it can be shown that the two come into conflict. The
second appeals to the core of common meaning that supports doctrines of natural rights and of
human rights. In fact, Hare and Madden tend to favor the latter justification, apparently even
appealing to a doctrine of human rights to justify and explain the strength of the Higher Law
doctrine at one point. They consider objections to both justificatory strategies but find these
objections unconvincing. There is really only one significant way of arguing against the
doctrine of human rights, namely, that insofar as it endorses civil disobedience it entails a loss
in social stability and a spreading effect of lawlessness. This is also the only serious objection
they identify against the Higher Law doctrine. The problem opponents raise is not actually
with the moral justification of civil disobedience, but with the possible effects of
irresponsible civil disobedience. Their reply to this objection is something of a tu quoque
move: if opponents of civil disobedience are really so concerned with respect for the law,
!
why do they not themselves enforce the laws already on the books? For the cases of
injustice that Hare and Madden appear to consider most pressing are not practices at that
point supported by law, but rather by lawbreakers in positions of authority who perpetuate
now-illegal forms of discrimination against minorities.10 In the face of such official
hypocrisy, in light of the fact that majorities will always seek to write, interpret, or apply
the law so as to deny the human rights of minorities, and in light of the realization that (as
King himself observed) there is a tragic gulf between civil rights laws passed and civil
rights laws implemented, 11 there is little room for doubt that civil disobedience is in some
cases not only morally justified, but even necessary for the health of the society. Hare and
Madden explicitly deploy this response against the view espoused by Supreme Court Justice Abe
Fortas. Fortas argued that, while civil disobedience may be appropriate or even necessary in
some situations, it is irrelevant and unnecessary in a nation like the United States where all
persons are constitutionally guaranteed various means of petition and redress. Fortas endorsed a
wholly procedural form of civil disobedience that relies on the system always to reform itself
via appeal, review, and other judicial avenues. Hare and Madden conclude their article with a
review of several (to us, fairly apparent) examples of the real gap that exists between
Fortass ideal constitutional democracy, and the imperfections of any actual democratic
society.
!
AFF$$ There$Is$A$Clear$Delineation$Between$Civil$Disobedience$
Acts$That$Incorporate$Violence$And$Terrorism.$$
$
Parker, Kelly. "Takin' It to the Streets: Hare and Madden on Civil Disobedience." Indiana
University Press. 2010. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/TRA.2010.46.1.35>.
In sum, then, Hare and Madden conclude that civil disobedience is both morally justified
and practically necessary in certain situations. Moreover, they recognize that the difficult
questions here are not those of general moral justification, but of the morality of specific
tactics. Among all the controversial tactics one might discuss, the use of violence is clearly the
most problematic consideration. As Hare and Madden say in a footnote, It is impossible to
distinguish precisely between civil disobedience with a violent element and insurrection [or
terrorism] since at some middle spot they would shade into each other. They propose some
guidelines for sorting the two classes of action into separate families: the terrorist is
indiscriminate, seeks to inflict maximal damage, and uses tactics that will favor the
insurgents survival to fight another day. Neither they nor anyone else in 1970 anticipated the
advent of suicidal tactics; in any case, the line between terrorism and violent civil
disobedience is drawn well on the near side of indiscriminate property damage or killing.
!
AFF$$ True$Civil$Disobedience$Must$Be$Nonviolent,$With$
Minimal$Amounts$Of$Force.$
Critically, civil disobedience must take place nonviolently, with a minimum of force, and
with respect for the rights and interests of others. This last component of the philosophy
plays a crucial role in ensuring that civil disobedience poses little threat to social order.27
Because of the inevitable tension inherent in illegal protest, disobedients must not only
eschew violence at the outset of their actions but also assess their ability to remain peaceful
given the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their conduct. Because all law breaking
involves some harm, justified civil disobedience dictates that only minimal injury may
occur and that it must bear a relationship to the unjust law or policy. For example, racial
discrimination in the school system would not justify a protest rendering a fire station
ineffective. The ban on force is often said to allow for minimal destruction of propertythe
burning of draft cards, for example. Similarly, some authors are willing to tolerate even de
minimis violence in the form of pushing and shoving incidental to protest.
AFF:$Successful$Action$ $ Novice$Topic$2013$
!
AFF$$ Definition$of$Civil$Disobedience.$
The problem of civil disobedience has received much attention in recent years. No generally
accepted definition of 'civil disobedience' has been found. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that civil
disobedience involves the public violation of the law of a government recognized as
legitimate by the disobedient. It is further safe to assert that any justified act of civil
disobedience (assuming that such there be) is likely to be peaceful and characterized by
acceptance of the penalty on the part of the disobedient.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$Has$Been$Traced$As$Far$Back$As$
Ancient$Greece.$
Civil disobedience, understood as breaching a law out of moral or political grounds, is not
a modern invention; it is a classical idea whose roots can be traced at least to ancient
Greece when Antigone courageously broke the law to bury his brother. And Socrates, a
great philosopher of ancient Greece, is also believed to be the first philosopher who
thoroughly examined the question of whether to obey or disobey an unjust law. In Crito, he
explained why laws should be followed and why disobedience to the law is rarely justified. In
this dialogue, it becomes clear that, for Socrates, one should obey the laws of the city as one
obeys his father and mother.
!
AFF$$ Civil$Disobedience$is$Viewed$in$Two$Different$Ways$
Historically.$
Since Socrates time, many philosophers have expressed views about civil disobedience.
Their attitudes towards civil disobedience can roughly be divided into two schools. The first
school adopts an affirmative attitude toward civil disobedience by recognizing its
justifiability under some circumstances. Those who hold this view include Henry David
Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi and Ronald Dworkin. A
second school, whose representatives include Morris I. Leibman and Lewis H. Van Dusen Jr.,
assumes a negative stance against civil disobedience, totally denying its justness or
propriety in the society. The voice of the latter school is much weaker than the formers.
The situation may be partly due to the fact that the view of the latter is the view which has
been adopted by the state, so the scholars in the latter group feel that they have much less
to say than the scholars in the former who have to strive for the recognition of their views.
!
AFF$$ There$Are$Two$Flaws$to$Conventional$Definitions$of$Civil$
Disobedience.$
Two tendencies must be avoided when defining civil disobedience. One tendency is to
define civil disobedience too broadly; the other is to define it too narrowly. If defined too
broadly, the definition of civil disobedience will include all kinds of protest; civil
disobedience, therefore, will lose its status as an independent and distinguished
phenomenon. But it is not good to define civil disobedience too narrowly either. If defined
too narrowly, civil disobedience may retain its distinguished character, but such a
definition will have little practical meaning because very few acts in reality can meet its
standard. Therefore, in order to avoid these two tendencies, two rules will be strictly followed
when I try to give a definition of civil disobedience. The first rule is that the definition of civil
disobedience should be able to include all typical cases of civil disobedience; the second rule
is that civil disobedience must be retained as an independent phenomenon with
distinguished characters from other kinds of protests.
!
AFF$$ The$History$Of$Civil$Disobedience.$
In my opinion, the historical development of civil disobedience might roughly be divided

into three stages. As I explained, the origin of civil disobedience can be traced to ancient
Greece, but the very term civil disobedience is popularly believed to be coined in the
nineteenth century by David Thoreau in his famous essay Civil Disobedience. Thoreau
used civil disobedience to boycott the war on Mexico and the American slavery system, but
at that time civil disobedience did not attract much attention of the public. So the time from
antiquity to Thoreau can be viewed as the birth stage of civil disobedience. Then, in the
twentieth century, the practice of King and Gandhi finally made civil disobedience famous.
Their practice also attracted the attention of both scholars and politicians around the world.
Many academic meetings were summoned and a great number of papers and books on civil
disobedience were published. Both theoretically and practically, civil disobedience emerged
as an important political concept during this period, which can be viewed as the developing
stage of civil disobedience. Generally speaking, this period stretches from Thoreaus time to
the civil rights movement in the United States. The third stage is the maturity period. In this
stage, civil disobedience began to be practiced in more areas and many organizations which
adopted civil disobedience as their main tactic were established. The typical cases in this
stage include the anti-globalization and environmental movements.
!
AFF$$ The$History$Of$Gandhian$Civil$Disobedience.$
Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (18691948) is the man who broadened the scope of civil
disobedience and helped civil disobedience to gain international fame. Gandhian civil
disobedience originated in 1906, in South Africa, as part of his campaign for the defense of
the civil rights of the disenfranchised Indian immigrants. There, he successfully compelled
the government of the Union of South Africa to make important concessions to his demands,
including recognition of Indian marriages and abolition of the poll tax for Indians. In early 1915,
Gandhi returned to India. As soon as he returned to his own country, he began to use the
techniques he had developed in South Africa to protest against oppressive taxation and
widespread discrimination, and above all to fight for the independence of India. Gandhi
famously led Indians in the disobedience of the salt tax on the 400 kilometer Gandhi Salt March
in 1930, and an open call for the British to quit India in 1942. Gandhi was imprisoned for
many years on numerous occasions in both South Africa and India, but his movement
attracted a huge number of followers from the Indian public. Thus, Gandhi was able to use
the technique as an effective political tool and played a key role in bringing about the
British decision to end colonial rule of his homeland. Gandhis India independence movement
was one of the few relatively unqualified successes in the history of civil disobedience. His
success made civil disobedience known to the world.
!
AFF$$ The$History$Of$Martin$Luther$King,$Jr.$and$Civil$
Disobedience.$
Kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail is considered the most widely read and discussed
manifesto on civil disobedience after Thoreau's essay. Although aware of Thoreaus writings,
King was more directly influenced by Gandhi and the Christian humanism. In his essay, he
maintained that there were two types of laws: just and unjust. He contended that those
laws which square with the moral law or the law of God are just, whereas those laws which
are out of harmony with the moral law are unjust. Just laws should be advocated; unjust
laws should be disobeyed because they degrade human personality. Like Thoreau and
Gandhi, King insisted on the nonviolence nature of civil disobedience. And, like Thoreau and
Gandhi, he emphasized the importance of accepting the penalty. One who breaks an unjust
law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. Moreover,
King was not only a theorist but also a great practitioner of civil disobedience. He played a very
active role in the African-American civil rights movement, similar to the role which Gandhi had
played in the independence movement of India.
$IBNQJPO#SJFGT
/PWJDF5PQJD
-JODPMO%PVHMBT#SJFG
/FHBUJWF
&WJEFODF
NEG:%Rule%of%Law%is%Necessary% Novice%Topic%2013%
!
NEG%%Rule%of%Law%is%Necessary%to%Protect%From%Violence,%Avoid%
Biased%Judgment,%and%Allow%for%Universal%Rule.%
Angelis, Theo J. "History and Importance of the Rule of Law." The World Justice Project. 2003.
Web. 03 Sept. 2013. <http://worldjusticeproject.org/publication/working-papers/history-
and-importance-rule-law>.
One simple formulation of the idea of rule of law is the idea that society should be ruled
by law, not men. At perhaps the most basic level, the rule of law has thus been used to
mean a system in which governance is based upon neutral and universal rules. This basic
formulation emphasizes three intertwined concepts: (1) that legal detriments should only
be imposed by law, not on the basis of the personal will or arbitrary decisions of government
officials or private actors (neutrality); (2) that government action should be subject to
regulation by rules, and that government officials should not be above the law
(universality); and (3) that people should be protected from private violence and coercion
(governance).
Champion)Briefs) ) 108%
!
NEG%%Rule%of%Law%Protects%Minorities.%
Green, David A. "Civil Disobedience and the Rule of Law." New Statesmen. 22 Feb. 2012. Web.
03 Sept. 2013. <http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/02/law-
rule-power-act-breaking>.
Against this view is the absolutist notion that the law is always to be obeyed without any
question. In no circumstances can one take the law into their own hands. The only
imperative is to act in accordance with lawful authority, regardless of the particular law and
concerns about its source: there is nothing to be done but to do what you are told.
These extremes of order and disorder are invariably attractive to the unthinking. Both the
shallow radical and the thuggish totalitarian do not need to think hard about any given situation;
indeed, they do not need to think at all. But both ignore the "Rule of Law" and its crucial and
precarious role in a liberal state.
The great left-wing historian E. P. Thompson pointed out that far from being necessarily an
instrument of oppression, the Rule of Law can provide a great benefit for the weak and
unfranchised. If all actions require a lawful basis, then those who otherwise would readily
abuse power were also restrained by the law. It is not open for those with power to simply act
as they will. Of course certain laws were unjust and unacceptable; but the general
application of the principle that one should obey the law may protect the vulnerable from
the knave and the fool.
!
NEG%%The%Rule%of%Law%is%Necessary%for%a%Just%Society.%
Green, David A. "Civil Disobedience and the Rule of Law." New Statesmen. 22 Feb. 2012. Web.
03 Sept. 2013. <http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/02/law-
rule-power-act-breaking>.
The Rule of Law is therefore important because it can be the only thing which can check or
deter the powerful from wrong-doing. It is a doctrine for the protection of all of us. This,
however, does not mean that there should never be civil disobedience. It instead requires us to
consider the wider implications of what would otherwise be a deliberate unlawful act. Is the
proposed course of action a mere gesture, some pose as a latter-day outlaw? Is a person breaking
the law just to show that they can? Or is it really the case that the principle of justice cannot be
asserted in any other way than to undermine the standard requirement of legality?
Each of us takes the daily benefit of the lawful behaviour of others. We are all better off
because other people comply with the law. To disobey a law should thereby not be a selfish
ploy or an act of vanity. There should be a greater and well-defined public good as the
prize of breaking the law, and any breach should be no more than necessary than to obtain that
prize. There are many ways to discredit and change a law other than to break it. On
occasion it may perhaps be entirely just to disobey the law; but over time, the Rule of Law
is fundamental to a just society.
!
NEG%%The%Rule%of%Law%is%Key%to%Preserving%Civil%Rights.%
Tamanaha, Brian. On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory. Cambridge. 2004. Web. 14
Sept. 2013.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=p4CReF67hzQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_
ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
The rule of law its definition and attributes, the possibility and conditions for its existence,
and its significance as a political virtue has long been a subject of scholarly investigation
and debate. In recent years, it has emerged from the confines of academic and philosophical
discourse onto the wider stage of contemporary political events, transcending national
borders, political regimes, and legal systems. Such diverse public figures as Paddy Ashdown,
Mohammed Khatami, George Bush, and Vladimir Putin have all recently extolled the rule of
law as the sine qua non of economic development, democracy, human rights, and
international stability. The rule of law seems increasingly important and desirable. But the
question remains: what is it? . The first (and broadest) theme is government limited by
law. This focuses not on individual liberty, but on restraint of government tyranny, and
was the dominant version (preceding the idea of individual liberty) until the advent of liberalism,
when the focus shifted to formal legality. It means first that government officials must abide
by the currently valid positive law, and second there are restraints on their law-making
power (how they can change the law), imposed by natural law, divine law, customary law, or
more recently human/civil rights.
!
NEG%%Rule%of%Law%Prevents%the%Biased%Nature%of%A%Single%Voice%
That%the%Mindset%Of%Civil%Disobedience%Empowers.%
Tamanaha, Brian. On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory. Cambridge. 2004. Web. 14
Sept. 2013.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=p4CReF67hzQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_
ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
The third theme is rule of law, not man. This avoids the unpredictable predilections of
individual actors. But since laws are not self-interpreting or applying, individuals cannot be
excluded from consideration. The rule of law response has been to identify the judiciary
(legal experts) as the special guardians of the law, and reduce the significance of the
individual as judge at its most extreme in formalism, which values the objective,
mechanical judge. This theme has been supported by the growth of law and lawyers and their
extensive social penetration in liberal societies, and by the separation of powers and subsequent
independence of judges, which was made possible by the professionalization of law. To prevent
the rule of law in this theme from becoming rule by judges is important, especially
following the decline of legal formalism. It requires careful selection of judges committed
to fidelity to the law, deference to proper authority to make the law, diverse social
background of judges, and qualities of judicial honesty and integrity, among other factors.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Defined%as%Selective%and%Public%
Performance%of%Actions%Truly%Believed%To%Be%Illegal.%
%
Bayles, Michael. "The Justifiability of Civil Disobedience." Review of Metaphysics. 1970. Web.
14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20125721>.
For purposes of this discussion civil disobedience may be defined as selective and public
performance of actions (commissions or omissions) truly believed to be illegal for reasons
which the agent takes to be morally compelling. This definition may not be that of ordinary
usage, but it denotes a broad range of conduct which needs ethical analysis and most likely
is not smaller than that denoted by ordinary usage. Five points about this definition require
comment. First, legal actions, even if performed as acts of protest and for morally
compelling reasons, do not constitute civil disobedience. Some borderline cases may arise,
for example, if a person violates a new statute in order to create a test case for its
constitutionality. According to this definition, if the defendant wins his case, then his action
did not constitute civil disobedience. Second, the agent must be aware of violating a law, or
else the intention to commit an illegal action cannot be established. For if a person commits
an act that he does not believe to be illegal he cannot intend to violate a law for morally
compelling reasons; he cannot even intend to violate a law although he can intend to
commit an act which happens to be illegal. Third, civil disobedience is public in the sense
that an agent does not try to hide his violation of a law from the authorities. However, an
agent need not perform the action before a mass meeting, television cameras or any other
persons at all. Whether or not an agent does so will depend upon the purpose or type of
civil disobedience in which he engages. Fourth, civil disobedience is selective; that is, the
agent morally objects to specific laws, regulations or policies and not the entire political-
legal system. One who finds an entire political legal system morally objectionable is
committed to revolution, a complete change of the order, although for tactical reasons he
may only defy specific laws, regulations and policies or substructures of the system. Lastly,
this definition includes both violent and non violent actions within it. Some philosophers
!
have argued that "civil disobedience" only denotes civil, non-violent, disobedience. To so
define the term tends to beg the question concerning the justifiability of violent
disobedience by implying violence is never justified. As the problem of justifying use of
violence has great importance it should be squarely faced and not adroitly avoided by
definitions.
!
NEG%%An%Individual%Engaging%in%Civil%Disobedience%Must%Accept%
Legal%Repercussions%For%His%Actions.%
%
The key to the reason a civil disobedient should accept legal punishment for his action lies
in the selectivity of civil disobedience and the hierarchy of orders of goods. Being selective,
civil dis obedience implies general acceptance of the political-legal system. A crucial
element of a legal system, whether by definition or as a basic moral principle, is the rule of
law. The rule of law is often equated with the principle of nulla poena sine lege, but a correl
ative principle is the equal application of the law?any violation of the law is a crime (illegal
action). Unless all persons, whom it is reasonable to believe violated the law, are indicted,
there is no sense to "the rule of law." Laws are special types of rules and to apply a rule is
to judge all relevant cases in terms of it. Hence, equal enforcement of laws is essential to
any morally justifiable political-legal system if not all such systems. It is a principle of at
least the second order of goods. As a civil disobedient accepts the political-legal system he -
is committed to the equal enforcement of the law. Hence, he is committed to the applica
tion of legal punishment to himself if he is convicted of violating a law. For a civil
disobedient to reject the moral justifiability of his being punished is to give up his claim to
accept the political-legal system as generally justifiable; it is to renounce the selectivity of
civil disobedience.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%an%Illegal%Act%Undertaken%For%a%
Moral%Reason.%It%Must%Also%Attempt%to%Change%a%Law.%
%
Elliston, Frederick. "Civil Disobedience and Whistleblowing: A Comparative Appraisal of Two
Forms of Dissent." Journal of Business Ethics . 1982. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/12134877/civil-disobedience-
whistleblowing-comparative-appraisal-two-forms-dissent>.
If we abstract from these contentions, a less problematic definition of civil disobedience

would include the following. First, one's action must be illegal: one cannot commit an act of
civil disobedience without breaking the law. The difficulty here is not strategic but
conceptual: a legal act by definition would never qualify as disobedience. Second, one's act
must be under taken for a moral reason : illegal actions motivated simply by self-interest
qualify as simple crimes, not civil disobedience. Third, one's action must be undertaken for
the purpose of changing a law one finds morally objectionable typically by drawing
attention to it by breaking it. Must one's actions be non-violent? Must they be performed
publicly rather than anonymously? Must one accept punishment? Must one be passive
rather than active? These, I believe, are strategic questions logically independent of the
definition of civil disobedience. The strategy adopted by the civil disobedient may affect our
moral appraisal of him and his act, but they should not cloud our identification of his action as
civil disobedience.
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NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%That%Disregards%the%Rule%of%Law%Cause%
Chaos.%
%
Schaeffer, Chris. "The Limits of Civil Disobedience." Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate
Research. 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=respublica>.
Civil disobedience should not supersede the rule of law because in the American
constitutional system, the rule of law is dually prescribed to both citizens and the
government. The actions and consequences are limited and equal to both the population
and the government that is in power. Fortas defends this claim when he states, Just as our
form of life depends upon the government's subordination to law under the constitution, so it also
depends upon the individual's subservience to the laws duly prescribed. Individuals who practice
civil disobedience should be bound by the laws, for if they are not, then the social compact
between the citizen and government is broken. Fortas furthers this notion when he claims, A
citizen cannot demand of his government or of other people obedience to the law, and at
the same time claim a right in himself to break it by lawless conduct, free of punishment or
penalty." A mutual acceptance of the Constitution and laws is necessary to preserve
democratic institutions and ensure continued success. Socrates ponders this proposal when he
asks Crito, Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down,
if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and
destroyed by private persons?
Even Howard Zinn, who is in disagreement with this position, recognizes the importance of the
state when he explains, "surely the state is an instrument ... for the achievement of human
values." However, if the rule of law is to be determined and enforced on a biased and
individual basis, then the state cannot exist to further any human values. Therefore, the
rule of law should be enforced, even in light of civil disobedience, so that democratic
institutions can ensure order and continuation of furthering the human values in
pursuance.
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NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Not%Compatible%With%The%U.S.%
System%of%Law.%
%
Black, Charles . "The Problem of the Compatibility of Civil Disobedience with American
Institutions of Government." Yale Law Journal. 1965. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3586&context=fss_
papers>.
A case like that of Peshwataro forced me to conclude that the act of willful disobedience to
law, while it never can be justified under law and, in that sense, never can be
compatible with law, still may, though most infrequently, at the greatest crises exhibit a
higher sort of compatibility with law, in that it may, if I may borrow from Professor
Fuller a phrase which is both a philosophy of law and a poem about law, help the law in
quest of itself. The exceedingly rare occasions on which a man of conscience and social
responsibility could make this judgment are not, I think, susceptible of general
definition. At least, many others have essayed such a definition and admittedly failed to
find it, and I will stand with them. Two extreme and, to me, untenable positions ought
to be mentioned.
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NEG%%The%Federal%System%of%the%United%States%Requires%
Obedience%to%the%Law,%Regardless%Of%Circumstances.%
%
papers>.
Up to now, I have been talking about the master-problem of civil disobedience as it is

classically conceived, and I am afraid I have done little more than to exhibit that I think about
this pretty much as the average man I am, and the far less-than-average philosopher. That
the law is the law is an important thing indeed, and there is a mighty obligation of
obedience. But this obligation, in the rarest of circumstances and after the gravest
searching of soul, may have to give way to a mightier yet. What you will have observed
is that all this presupposes, as most of the far more subtle philosophic discussions have
presupposed, something called "the law," something called "the government"--a
unitary and simple system, that is to say, of legal order and of legal obligation. And I
am sure that what will have come into your mind is the thought that this is not our
situation at all in the United States. Federalism exists elsewhere, but here it is the heart
and soul of politics. Lawyers have come to expect that the most delicate questions in all
parts of the law, from criminal justice to the labeling of food, from the racial discrimination
to the financing of urban redevelopment, will arise from the fact that, over every person and
over every square foot of our territory, except for a few special enclaves, two systems of law,
two generating sources of legal obligation, exist-that of some state, and that of the nation. It
would not be surprising to find that questions about what is commonly called civil
disobedience are with us given a special cast by the existence of this federal system of
ours. For the rest of my time, I propose to present two principal reflections concerning the
effect of federalism on the problem of what is ordinarily called civil disobedience.
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NEG%%The%Rule%of%Law%Includes%Primary%and%Secondary%Rules%of%
Obligation.%Civilly%Disobedient%Acts%That%Break%Either%Are%
Problematic.%
%
Cannon, Malcolm. "Civil Disobedience: Moral Prerogative or Lawless Act." Lake Forest
College Publications. 1989. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://publications.lakeforest.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=allcoll
ege_writing_contest>.
Hart defines the concept of law as the union of primary rules of obligation with
secondary rules. The primary rules, such as criminal law, impose duties of abstention,
such as those against killing and stealing. The secondary rules create powers, both
public and private, through offices. What is germane to the issue of civil disobedience in
Hart's concept of law is that it does not posit acceptance by those outside the system as
a condition of its proper function. Further, his concept of law proceeds in the positivist
tradition, defining all moral and legal issues as mutually exclusive of each other. For
law as conceived by Hart, legality and worthiness are radically distinct characteristics.
This theory accords judges and administrators no interpretive function, but rather leaves to
them the task of applying the law to various cases. There is little or no room for principles,
either of individual or social conscience in the administration of law, precisely because
these principles are not legal ones. In Hart's system, it is thus clear that the state trying
a civil disobedience case, is utterly bereft of options. There is no reasonable alternative to
prosecution and conviction coupled with punishment to the full extent of the law. The
selection of the option of full prosecution and conviction in the Smithson case denies judicial
hearing of the issues that civil disobedience raises. If there is to be any legal recognition that
either some feature of the law is deficient or that the concerns of conscience and morality
which provoke civil disobedience have legitimate grounds, then this recognition must come
through legislative channels. Specifically, in the Smithson case, to implement this response is
to recognize only that Smithson does not qualify for the exemption, without recognition of
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his obvious sincerity. Furthermore, Hart's theory fails to address the issue Smithson raises by
relegating the objective grounds of his defense to the status of inadmissible evidence, thereby
denying Smithson any prospect of justice.
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NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Less%Extreme%than%Revolution%but%
Falls%Outside%of%The%Confines%of%The%Law.%%
%
Grant, Stephen. "Should We Ever Disobey the Law?" Richmond Journal of Philosophy.
2007. Web. 14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.richmond-
philosophy.net/rjp/back_issues/rjp14_grant.pdf>.
The specific question I wish to consider here is whether or not we can justify what has been
called civil disobedience. To begin with, it will be helpful to contrast what is meant by this
with other closely related terms. Civil disobedience is flanked by two further forms of
political action. The more extreme form of action is revolution, which involves an
attempt to overturn the state as a whole, with the aim of replacing existing forms of
authority with a differing or improved set institutions, often organised according to an
alternative set of political ideals. Revolution usually involves political violence acts
violence committed with a specifically political aim. The less radical alternative is
political protest, which usually involves opposition to a specific law or policy, such as
the introduction of university tuition fees or the invasion of Iraq. Crucially, protest
takes place within the law, and is often organised with the full knowledge and co-
operation of the state. Civil disobedience lies between these two forms of action in the
sense that it is generally more limited in its aims and methods than revolution, but it
contrasts with protest on the grounds that it falls outside the law.
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NEG%%Rawls'%Idea%of%Civil%Disobedience%is%Extremely%Complex%
And%Hard%To%Apply%in%Different%Political%Standings.%%
The supposed challenge to Rawls hinges on whether or he has provided us with a

necessary set of conditions to which actions must conform if they are to be acts of civil
disobedience. The thought is that Rawls is overly prescriptive and fails to take account of
the enormous complexity of the types of situation we are confronted with in the course of
our dealings with the state. As a result, he tries to set out criteria which are overly precise and
therefore opens himself up to the types of counter example presented by Nielson. But it is far
from clear that Rawls is open to this sort of criticism. Let us start with the cases of the marijuana
smoker and the pro-choice doctor. Rawls is clear that the act of civil disobedience need not
involve breaking the specific law to which one is opposed. His advice to the marijuana
smoker would simply be that he could conform to the full set of criteria for civil
disobedience by breaking laws which carry a far lesser penalty, such as illegally blocking
traffic, and publicly stating his reason for doing so in court. A Rawlsian is likely to be
suspicious of anyone who insists upon breaking the specific law he is opposed to, and avoiding
capture. It looks entirely unnecessary to break only that law, and therefore raises serious doubts
about the integrity of the person. True civil disobedients are often extremely imaginative in their
choice of law-breaking, with one famous, recent group being Fathers for Justice, who were
demanding changes to laws which allow mothers to restrict the access of fathers to children.
Their activities usually centred around dressing up as superheroes and illegally occupying highly
public places such as Buckingham Palace.4 Unless the person could offer further justification
as to why he had no option but the breaking of that specific law, it is far from clear that the
person has acted with the moral integrity of the true civil disobedient.
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NEG%%Rawls'%Theory%Would%Rule%Out%Civil%Rights%Activists%
Because%of%Their%Minimal%Use%of%Violence.%
%
The cases of the civil rights protesters denied the right to march, and who puncture the tyres
of police vehicles raise very similar issues to those already considered, but we should start by
making clear that Rawls avoids making the straightforward identification between the
idea of a liberal democracy with a constitution on the one hand, and the idea of a just
state on the other. That is to say, he recognises that not all constitutional democracies
are just, and many such states are guilty of crushing the liberties of certain groups.
Rawls criteria apply where there is a general pattern of the just principles which
underlie the fundamental institutions of state being reflected in the practices with which
the state deals with its citizens. This means that it must be possible for a principle such
as the offices of state being open to all being reflected in the reality of how the state
operates. If this does not occur, such as in cases where people are systematically barred from
taking up certain opportunities based on gender or ethnicity, then this raises serious questions
as to whether or not this can reasonably be described as a just state. A state with a
democratic system which has popular laws which seriously violate the liberties of
certain groups may be more unjust than a nondemocratic system which treats all of its
citizens with equal respect. The question now becomes what kind of state we are living
in. If it is a state which is fundamentally just in terms of its basic principles and
constitution, but has certain unjust laws which can be changed by persistent appeal to
the fundamental principles, then civil disobedience will be the most radical form of
action which is consistent with morality. But if there is only the appearance of justice,
perhaps through a rhetoric of equality and equal liberty for all, and the reality is of
deep-rooted prejudice which is immune to the ideals which are expressed by the
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constitution and the majority of citizens, then this casts serious doubt as to whether the
state really is one which would conform to Rawls conception of a just one. Justifying
some of the more radical actions of civil rights activists in the deep south of the 1960s
would require an answer to this question, and once again it may be that Rawls is in
some difficulty here. He rarely identifies specific states as ones which he has in mind
when setting out his theories, but his discussion of civil disobedience in A Theory of
Justice makes explicit reference to Martin Luther King Jr.,6 and it seems likely that one
example of a fundamentally just state with some unjust laws would be the United States
of that era. As such, his theory of civil disobedience would have to rule out the actions
of those civil rights activists engaging in even mild acts of violence.
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NEG%%Even%Actions%That%Fall%Outside%Of%Rawls'%Paradigm%May%
Be%Unjustified.%
%
If this is right, then Rawls can be interpreted as providing us with a reasonable set of
criteria for what is to count as civil disobedience in a just state, but as acknowledging that
there may be cases where states which appear to be just on the surface are nevertheless
guilty of appalling injustice towards some or even all of its citizens. In such cases, actions
which do not conform to his criteria may be justified in light of the extreme circumstances
which obtain. In the case of states which the principles of justice are embedded in both the
institutions and the general practices of the state, then Rawls criteria still seem like a
reasonable set of constraints. One obvious objection is that it may be difficult to draw the line
between just and unjust states, but this neednt count as an overwhelming objection to Rawls.
The dividing line may well be difficult to draw at the margins, but there are some states we do
recognise as just, and if we are to find a way of both describing what civil disobedience is, and
the moral limits to it within a just state, then Rawls can still be seen to have given us a plausible
set of criteria. The ultimate weakness which his theory faces is that many of us have the
intuition that it is morally permissible to go beyond the limits set out by Rawls in certain
instances. There may be fundamentally just state, with certain laws which require change,
and where it seems right to engage in at least mild acts of violence or avoid arrest. It is not
yet clear how this intuition can be reconciled with Rawls position.
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NEG%%Citizens%Have%a%Moral%Duty%to%Follow%the%Law.%%
Leibman, Morris . "Civil Disobedience: A Threat to Our Law Society. The Freeman. 1964.
Web. 14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/civil-disobedience-a-
threat-to-our-law-society>.
No society whether free or tyrannical can give its citizens the "right" to break the law.
There can be no law to which obedience is optional, no command to which the state
attaches an "if you please." What has happened to us? Why is it necessary, at this moment,
in this forum to repeat what should be axiomatic and accepted? Many, many words more
eloquent than mine have examined from every angle the genesis, the roots, the grievances,
the despair, the bitterness, the emotion, the frustration that have resulted in the tragedies of
these days. Now what is the responsibility of a citizenthe majestic title bestowed on
those of us who create and share in the values of the law society? Let there be no ques-
tion of where we stand on human rights and our rejection of discrimination. Surely the
continuing social task for the morally sensitive citizen is to impart reality to the yet
unachieved ideal of full and equal participation by all and in all our values and
opportunities.
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NEG%%The%American%Political%System%Has%Changed%To%
Accommodate%Social%Trends,%Indicating%That%Working%
Through%the%System%Can%Be%Effective.%
%
What about the concept of righteous civil disobedience? I take it that all men now accept
the fact that there can be no justification for violent disobedience under our constitutional
system. Is the concept validated when the disobedience is nonviolent? In my opinion this
idea has no place in our law society. Parenthetically, I would suggest that you experts in
criminal law consider whether there can be "civil" disobedience where there is a specific intent to
disobey the law. Such a specific state of mind is ordinarily treated as the essence of criminality,
hence not "civil." Therefore, it seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction in the concept
of premeditated, "righteous" civil disobedience. Yet I prefer to base the case on broader grounds.
The concept of righteous civil disobedience, I think, is incompatible with the concept of the
American legal system. This is particularly axiomatic where this society provides more
than any other for orderly change; where every minorityincluding the minority of one
has been protected by a system of law which provides for orderly process for development
and change. I cannot accept the right to disobey where, as here, the law is not static and
where, if it is claimed to be oppressive or coercive, many effective channels for change are
constantly available. Our courts do not have to apologize for their continued dedication to
the liberty of all men. Our legislatures have regularly met the changing times and changing
needs of the society with consideration for the unalienable rights of all. Even the Federal
and state constitutions have been amended. Our law has not only been a guardian of
freedom, but the affirmative agent for freedom.
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NEG%%Rawls'%Theory%of%Natural%Justice%Requires%Obedience%to%
the%Law,%Even%If%the%Laws%Are%Unjust.%
%
Simmons, John. "Disobedience And Its Objects." Boston University Law Journal. 2010.
Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/documents/SIMMONS
.pdf>
According to Rawls, the natural duty of justice (along with what he calls the duty of
civility) requires that we comply with those laws that apply to us in near-just societies.
This implication of the duty, he believes, is uncontroversial in the case of just laws. And
legal obedience is generally required even if the laws in question are unjust, as some
laws will inevitably be, even with a nearly just constitution and just legislative
procedures. Compliance is here simply part of the cost of making a constitutional
democracy work, and all must share this burden at least, if the injustice in question is
not too severe and if the burdens of injustice do not fall too regularly on the same
people (e.g., minority groups). This duty to comply, however, appears to conflict with
our duty to oppose injustice (along with our right to defend our own liberties). So the
central question of Rawlss theory of civil disobedience becomes: When does injustice in
a near-just constitutional regime establish a right of (and, further, a justification for)
disobedience to unjust law?
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NEG%%Rawl's%Theory%on%Civil%Disobedience%Has%Widespread%
Flaws.%Violent%Acts%Are%Antithetical%to%the%Political%
System.%%
Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
.pdf>
Even operating within the very limited scope of Rawlss account, there are several
obvious questions that ought to be raised. First, in concentrating solely on the idea of
legal disobedience as a way of addressing the public in political terms, Rawls seems to
ignore two motives for legal disobedience that seem both perfectly justifiable and to
frequently guide the choices of actual practitioners of civil disobedience: namely, the
desire to frustrate evil (as in Gandhis campaigns) and the desire to avoid complicity in
injustice or wrongdoing (as in Thoreaus disobedience). Is it obvious that non-political
legal disobedience originating in such concerns, even in a near-just state, will always be
morally indefensible? Second, if such reasons for noncompliance are (as I believe them
to be) often defensible, it is further unclear why legal disobedience (in a near-just state)
should always be open and public, with fair notice given in advance. Our morally
respectable desire (or perhaps our moral duty) to avoid complicity in wrongdoing (by, say,
refusing to pay a legally prescribed tax that supports an unjust policy) seems adequate by
itself to justify legal disobedience. Why should open acceptance of (perhaps quite harsh)
legal punishment be necessary to justify it? And the laudable goal of frustrating evil or unjust
policies is seldom very effectively advanced by announcing in advance the time, place, and
manner of planned legal disobedience. Further, it seems possible to question even the
most basic (and perhaps the most widely shared) of Rawlss assumptions that
disobedience in a near-just state must always be non-violent. Rawlss own commitment
to this view is not motivated by any prior commitment to pacifism (like that of Gandhi or
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King). It is motivated rather by his other requirements that legal disobedience be a
political act, addressed to the public. One cannot, Rawls thinks, address the public with
violence; violence constitutes an assault, not a conversation. And violent acts, far from
being political (that is, fitting usefully within a framework of basically just political
institutions), in fact are antithetical to and express contempt for law and politics (which
are premised on limiting threats and uses of violence to the legal institutions charged
with maintaining order).
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NEG%%Rawls'%Arguments%Fails%to%Take%into%Account%Partial%
State%Legitimacy%Which%Makes%it%Impossible%to%Follow.
%
Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
.pdf>
My point here is only that many of the objects of legal disobedience in actual political
affairs concern neither some simple structural injustice nor some particularly deep
structural injustice that is thought to have delegitimated the state with respect to all of
its claimed subjects (or territories). Rather, the claim is often one of partial state
illegitimacy with respect to certain wronged peoples, and the object of their
disobedience is precisely to defy or to repair that wrong. Rawlss theory of domestic
justice appears to have no place for such complaints of partial illegitimacy, for
considering the moral positions of subsets of the societys members who are
illegitimately subjected to state power. Rawls begins with the idea of domestic societies or
nations (peoples) as having fixed sets of members and fixed geographical boundaries. The
moral question for Rawls is simply whether the basic structure of the society is
sufficiently just that its coercive powers can be justified to all reasonable persons within
its claimed (or acknowledged) boundaries. There is, then, no place in Rawlss theory of
domestic justice to acknowledge the legitimate grievances of and the moral justifications
for legal disobedience by persons who have been illegitimately subjected to state coercion,
except in cases where all subjects can be so described. States, for Rawls, are either
sufficiently just that all of their claimed subjects are legitimately subject to their coercive
powers because the states basic structures could be expected to be endorsed by all
reasonable persons or they are sufficiently unjust that they have no authority whatsoever,
leaving all of their claimed subjects morally at liberty (that is, bound only by whatever
morality they are subject to simply as persons). Rawlss nonideal theory is not, then,
!
inadequate merely because its account of civil disobedience fails to apply to the paradigm
practitioners of civil disobedience, such as Thoreau. It is more deeply inadequate in
precluding without argument even the possible justifiability of legal disobedience for
the sorts of reasons (and with the sorts of objects) that characterize not only some of
Thoreaus concerns, but those of many others, both historical and contemporary.
NEG:%No%Right%to%Civil%Disobediance% Novice%Topic%2013%
!
NEG%a% There%is%No%Logical%Right%to%Civil%Disobedience.%
%
One of the most perplexing problems concerning civil disobedience is the claim of a right
to civil disobedience. A right to something (at least in the sense important here) involves a
claim that others not interfere in performance of an action or use of an object. To claim a
right to civil disobedience is to claim that any and all actions which may properly be
classified as civil disobedience are right (justifiable), or at least prima facie right, and that
this should be recognized by others. One must distinguish this sense of having a right to
perform an action of type A from the Tightness (justifiability, permissibility) of an action of
type A. One can claim that some actions of type A are justifiable without recognizing any right
to them. Sometimes, perhaps, extra-marital sexual relations are justifiable, but making this claim
does not commit one to recognizing that anyone has a right to extra-marital relations. The present
question is the justification of a right to civil disobedience, not the Tightness of some acts of civil
dis obedience.
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%
NEG%%A%Legal%Right%to%Civil%Disobedience%Cannot%Exist.%Civil%
Disobedience%is%an%Illegal%Action.%
%
No non-trivial legal right to civil disobedience can exist. This point follows from the above
definition of civil disobedience as the performance of an illegal action. A legal system which
granted a right to perform illegal actions would be self-contradictory. If an illegal action is
defined as violation of a law ignoring other relevant laws, then one sometimes has a legal
right to commit an illegal action because of another law which explicitly permits the action.
But if an illegal action is defined, as is usual, with respect to the whole system, taking into
account the hierarchy of laws taking precedence over others, then obviously there can be no legal
right to perform an illegal action. It has been suggested that conscientious moral objection to
a law could be included as a general defense at law. This suggestion does not involve any
logical difficulties due to the hierarchy of laws. If such a defense were included, however,
no one who availed himself of it would be performing an act of civil disobedience for he
would not be committing an illegal act. The action of conscientious objectors to war in
obtaining legal exclusion from military service is not civil disobedience. Inclusion of a
defense of conscientious moral objection would at best be plausible for cases of personal
civil disobedience. Extension of it to social civil disobedience, perhaps only to personal
disobedience, might seriously damage the objective meaning of mens rea and the principle of
legality. Of course, if the previous definition of civil disobedience were ehanged to include test
cases and other actions later declared legal within the denotation of "civil disobedience," then
some acts of civil disobedience would be legally defensible and one would have a legal right to
perform them (at least after the case was decided). Finally, in the sense that one has a legal
right to what the law does not forbid and civil disobedience itself is not an illegal action in
addition to the illegal action involved, there is a right to civil disobedience.
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%
NEG%%To%Recognize%a%Right%to%Civil%Disobedience%Would%
Make%Moral%Considerations%Irrelevant.%
%
From an observer's standpoint the question of a right to civil disobedience is whether one
shall consider morally justifiable all illegal actions performed by agents who sincerely think
their actions morally justifiable. To recognize such a right would be to admit that an
agent's sincerity in such cases outweighs all other moral considerations. Even if an observer
were to believe that the circumstances would not justify his performing the action if he
were in the agent's situation, he would recognize the action to be morally right because the
agent thinks it is. What reasons might there be for adopting this position?
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%
NEG%%There%is%No%Justifiable%Reason%to%Recognize%a%Right%to%
Civil%Disobedience.%
%
Three conditions moderate this conclusion that there is no reason to recognize a right to
civil disobedience. First, it rules out only acts of civil disobedience as such being morally
justifiable. Specific acts will be thought justifiable by different persons depend ing upon
their moral convictions and evaluation of situations. Second, as civil disobedience exhibits
great personal dedication to moral principles, the problem, if any, does not concern moral
conscientiousness but principles and, thus, the appropriate cor rection lies primarily in the
realm of education making leniency in punishment (though probably not absence of
punishment) desirable. Third, whether or not a right to civil disobedience exists, an agent
who thinks a particular act of civil disobedience justifiable will feel morally compelled to
perform it. So even if this discus sion of a right to civil disobedience is correct, the question
before an agent remains whether or not specific acts of civil disobedience are justifiable.
The rest of this paper discusses considerations which seem relevant from an agent's point of view
concerning a justification of civil disobedience.
!
%
NEG%%True%Civil%Disobedience%Requires%That%All%Legal%Forms%
Of%Dissent%Be%Exhausted%First.%
%
The implication of these considerations for civil disobedience of an immoral lawr may now be
considered from the viewpoints of the two types of civil disobedience. For personal civil dis
obedience an immoral law should never be obeyed under any circumstances. The person finds
he is legally required to perform an action contrary to his moral integrity and conscience.
He cannot obey the law even while exhausting legal recourses. So long as he is required to
perfom the action he must refuse whether or not legal recourse has been used. However,
both before and after a situation calling for disobedience arises, he should use all possible
legal recourses to avoid the requirement. The immorality of the action he is required to
perform must in his view be extreme ly grave for in disobeying he is claiming that either
government has no right to regulate such a matter or the immorality of the action
outweighs his commitment to the governmental procedures. Given that he considers the
political-legal system generally justifi able, the prinicipal involved must be fundamental to
his personal morality.
!
%
NEG%%Citizens%Pondering%Civil%Disobedience%Are%Required%To%
Engage%In%Other%Forms%Of%The%Political%Process%First.%
%
The position of a person contemplating social civil dis obedience differs from that of a
personal disobedient in important respects. As a social disobedient's purpose is to change
or protest a law he considers immoral, no sufficient grounds for disobedience exist until all
avenues of legal change or protest have been exhaust ed. Against this point it may be urged
that occasionally no time for legal recourse exists before evil effects of a law occur. If so,
two considerations are relevant. First, was the law opposed before it was adopted? If not,
then unless one was incapable of opposing it (e.g., too young or lived elsewhere) or has since
changed his mind, this claim is not a sufficient reason for ignoring legal recourses. Second,
as one's purpose is to prevent the evil effects from occurring, the likelihood of disobedience
being successful in this respect becomes relevant. If it has little or no chance of success,
then disobedience cannot be justified. If legal recourse has been used at all appropriate
stages and failed, then a social civil disobedient must claim the subject of the law is not an
appropriate matter for decision by present governmental procedures. Such a claim is
difficult (but not impossible) to support. If no legal recourse was available at any time, the
situation is more serious. Generally, as one has been denied a fundamental procedural right, i.e.,
a method for redress of grievances, protest about this fact would be more significant than protest
about the allegedly immoral law.
!
NEG%%A%Failure%To%Try%Other%Action%First%Is%Morally%
Reprehensible.%
Elliston, Frederick. "Civil Disobedience and Whistleblowing: A Comparative Appraisal of Two

Forms of Dissent." Journal of Business Ethics . 1982. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/12134877/civil-disobedience-
whistleblowing-comparative-appraisal-two-forms-dissent>.
Frequently critics claim that if civil disobedience is to occur at all it must be a last resort: to
break the law before one has exhausted all other avenues of change is morally
reprehensible. This stipulation does not necessarily advocate civil disobedience when all
other remedies have failed, but condemns such acts when the alternatives have not been
tried. What can be said for or against this last-resort proviso? On one analysis, it is the
logical consequence of one's obligation to obey the law. if one can avoid breaking the law,
one should do so and the only way to discover whether one can avoid breaking the law is to
try the alternatives. All other things being equal, if one can achieve one's objective.
!
NEG%%If%Citizens%Receive%Goods%From%The%State,%They%Are%
Morally%Required%To%Comply%With%The%Laws%And%
Demands%Of%That%State.%
Tunick, Mark. "Hegel on Justified Disobedience." Political Theory. 1998. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/192202>
Several theories of political obligation hold that an obligation to support and comply with
the demands of the state is entailed from the fact that we receive benefits from the state,
although the ways in which the obligation is derived from benefits received are quite
different. According to the principle of utility, subjects have an obligation to comply with
the state's demands insofar as doing so is beneficial. Jeremy Bentham writes, "It is [the
subjects'] duty to obey just so long as it is their interest, and no longer." According to the
principles of fairness and gratitude, an obligation is entailed from receipt of benefits
regardless of whether fulfilling a specific obligation is beneficial to the subject. On the
fairness theory, receipt of public goods from which we benefit entails an obligation based
on fairness to contribute to the cooperative ventures that provide these goods so long as the
benefits and burdens of these ventures are distributed fairly. On the gratitude theory, every
citizen who has received benefits from the state owes the state an obligation of gratitude not
to act contrary to the state's interests, and this means, among other things, complying
with the law. On both theories, those who receive no benefits may have no obligation to comply
with the law.
!
NEG%%We%Are%Obligated%to%Support%the%Institution%of%
Government%as%Long%as%They%Are%Just%Institutions%That%
Carry%Out%The%Public%Will.%
%
In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel addresses the question of why we should obey the law and
otherwise discharge our political obligations, and his answer is not "because it is the law" or
"because they are our obligations." Hegel acknowledges that there can be unjust laws, and he
does not think we are bound to them merely because they are called law. Hegel thinks we
are obligated to support just institutions-institutions that are right (Recht)-but not from a
natural duty to support just institutions. The reason Hegel gives is a reason to support only
the just institutions that have a special place in our life, that are our institutions. As we
shall see, for Hegel it is because they are our just institutions and not out of a sense of duty
to support any just institutions that we feel, and are, obligated to them. Nor, on Hegel's
view, is the reason we obey the law or commit ourselves to the state to augment social
utility. While Hegel does not explicitly take up utilitarian theories of political obligation, he
is opposed to the general project of utilitarianism. "Utility," he says, "is never capable of
giving the last decision on a matter"(Rph V, 3:687, 18-21). Nor does Hegel think we are
obligated to support our political institutions out of either fairness or a sense of gratitude. Hegel
might not deny that fairness or gratitude are reasons for discharging at least some political
obligations. He notes that one condition of our having obligations to the state is that the
state provides for our welfare, calling to mind the fairness argument that bases political
obligations on benefits received, and there is at least one passage in which Hegel suggests
that gratitude to the state is an appropriate feeling to have: Hegel criticizes those who
always find fault with the state, instead of focusing on all the good the state does for us,
which we take for granted-Hegel suggests we are not grateful enough (PR 268 Z). But in his
account of why we should be committed to the state and comply with its demands, Hegel points
to neither utility, fairness, nor gratitude.
!
NEG%%The%State%is%a%Reflection%of%The%Political%Will%of%Its%
Citizens.%Therefore,%Citizens%Have%A%Duty%To%Comply%
With%Its%Law.%%
Each of the prevailing approaches to justified isobedience have their own ambiguities in
application, and most fail to discuss strategies of disobedience as well. The ambiguities in
Hegel's theory, then, should not rule his theory out as a candidate for inclusion in
contemporary debates. Perhaps the core claim in Hegel's political philosophy is that the
demands of the state reflect the true will of its citizens, who have been brought up and
shaped by its practices and laws, so that complying with these demands is to be not forced
but free. We should want to comply with these demands (if they are rational). This idea that
citizens identify with their state and its ethical life is virtually absent from contemporary
political philosophers' accounts of political obligation. Theorists holding that an obligation
to support and comply with the demands of the state is entailed from the fact that we
receive benefits from the state have a difficult time explaining why any distinction should
be made between citizens and noncitizens also receiving benefits. A social utilitarian is hard
pressed to explain why we should be committed to promoting the interest of only those humans
who fall within the borders of our polity, or how those borders are to be drawn. Philosophical
anarchists deny that there is any special obligation of citizens to their state. Despite important
difficulties that need to be worked out in a Hegelian account, I believe contemporary political
philosophy can benefit from an added voice, one that uniquely points to the role ethical practices
shared by members of the state play in citizens' political identity and how this may bear on the
extent to which citizens are obligated to comply with the state's demands.
!
NEG%%The%United%States%is%Not%Obligated%to%Condone%Civil%
Disobedience%Under%the%Constitution.%
%
papers>.
Secondly, no specific provision in the Constitution binds us to take any simple

predetermined stance toward such a civil disobedience movement. The United States is
obligated to guarantee to every state a "republican form of government." But that form
of government is not threatened by a passive campaign aimed at bringing state elective
machinery, criminal procedures, and standards of equality into line with federal
guarantees, even though state law might be violated in such a campaign. Congress and
the President might legitimately judge in the given case that it was the opposition, the
simulacrum of republican government that threatened the essence of such government.
The United States is also obligated, on application from a state, to protect it from
"domestic violence." But (aside from the fact that I speak of nonviolence) the application
of the formal state government could only invoke and could hardly control the form of
the federal intervention. On the whole, the rest of us through our national government
would be constitutionally free to act as we thought just and wise, if it should happen that
a Negro population, treated as I have described, embarked on a course of true civil
disobedience against the offending state. Any notion that we must disapprove of or aid in
suppressing such a movement, or even that we are forbidden to use the federal power to aid
it, is founded only on custom thought, 1877 model, and not on the Constitution. It is my
earnest submission that, if the case should occur, we ought to use a prudently measured
federal power to assist and protect. In the absence of valid constitutional objection, how
could we choose otherwise?
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Represents%a%Problem%to%the%U.S.%
Federal%System.%
%
papers>.
The fact that we are a federal union gives all our problems a special form, and the civil
disobedience problem is no exception. The fact that we are a federal union changes much
that would be civil disobedience into a mere claim of legal right, asserted against what only
seems to be law. And our federal character makes it possible for true civil disobedience to be
mounted against a state government without any loss of national allegiance, without any
surrender of the right to national guarantees, and, indeed, in the interest of preserving the soul of
the nation. I exhort you to think about this last problem in terms of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, to separate the constitutional from what is merely conventional, and
to ask yourselves whether the merely conventional modes of our thought can be allowed to
keep this nation from doing what it can to sustain and protect any civil disobedience
movement that is aimed in the end only at making effective the guarantees we have all
written and kept in our Constitution. Our customary thought about the federal obligation,
where state power is massively and wrongfully incident on the Negro race, has not so proud a
record as to make it inappropriate for us to reexamine its deepest foundations.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Implicitly%Indicates%That%There%is%a%
Problem%in%Society.%
Cannon, Malcolm. "Civil Disobedience: Moral Prerogative or Lawless Act." Lake Forest
College Publications. 1989. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://publications.lakeforest.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=allcoll
ege_writing_contest>.
How should the law respond to civil disobedience? The question brings to issue a host of
conflicting principles which any sophisticated legal system must reconcile or otherwise confront.
Implicit in the act of civil disobedience is the troubling circumstance that either the
structure of the law or its application is in some sense deficient in propriety, equity, or
morality. The task for the law is to establish a framework for resolving cases of civil
disobedience in a manner which best preserves the spirit of morality, justice, and
practicality. For the purposes of this work, it is necessary to define those acts which may be
properly classified as acts of civil disobedience. An act of civil disobedience, nonviolent but
violating a law, involves the intentional breaking of, or non-compliance with, a law
perceived by the perpetrator to conflict with personal principle or conscience. Civil
disobedience may also involve the violation of an unrelated law to dramatize a law claimed
to be immoral, or to protest some larger injustice in society.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Not%Protected%Under%the%First%
Amendment.%
%
Coleman, Gerald. "Civil Disobedience: A Moral Critique" Theological Studies . 1985. Web. 14
Sept. 2013. <http://www.ts.mu.edu/readers/content/pdf/46/46.1/46.1.2.pdf>.
This First Amendment right is often appealed to by disobedience demonstrators,

claiming that because their protest is clearly a form of political speech, it is protected by
the Constitution of the United States. Speech, after all, is not restricted to verbal activity. It
can take many forms, oral, written, or other; its essential element is the communication of an
idea. A classical example is picketing in a labor dispute, long held to be a violation of state law,
but in 1940 declared worthy of protection by the Supreme Court in Thornhill v. Alabama. It is
crucial to add here, however, that it does not follow logically that an act becomes principally
and essentially an act of speech merely because a person wishes that it be so regarded. The
deliberate violation of a trespass statute that is not being deviously employed, whatever the
motivation of the violators, cannot reasonably be treated as one of the forms of speech
deserving constitutional protection. In other words, an action does not become an act of
speech protected by the First Amendment simply because the actor claims it is such a
speech. As Carl Cohen points out, Such generalized protection was not the original
intention, nor is it the proper function, of the First Amendment of the American
Constitution.
!
%
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Impossible%to%Define.%%
Coleman, Gerald. "Civil Disobedience: A Moral Critique" Theological Studies . 1985. Web. 14
Sept. 2013. <http://www.ts.mu.edu/readers/content/pdf/46/46.1/46.1.2.pdf>.
These definitions exemplify the fact that there is no single manner of describing precisely
the nature of civil disobedience. Authors seem agreed that it is an act of disobeying
formally binding general law on grounds of moral or political principle, without
challenging the validity of law. Civil disobedience can also include an incidental
disobedience of general law, which itself is not directly challenged or disapproved of, but is
disobeyed in the course of agitating for change in public policy, actions, or social
conditions. In either case the legal order makes no allowance for the disobedience.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Requires%a%Violation%of%The%
Government%Policy,%As%Well%As%Valid%Law%And%Order.%
%
Coleman, Gerald. "Civil Disobedience: A Moral Critique" Theological Studies . 1985. Web.
14 Sept. 2013. <http://www.ts.mu.edu/readers/content/pdf/46/46.1/46.1.2.pdf>.
Civil disobedience is a deliberate attempt to coerce the legal order; it is not merely dissent,
where a person differs with the legal order in speech, in the press, by petition, or in an
assembly. It involves a deliberate and punishable breach of a legal duty. There cannot be
civil disobedience, then, unless there is a conscious choice to violate not merely a
government policy but a technically valid law or order: Only such laws and orders as are
... held valid under our Constitution are subject to genuine civil disobedience.
!
%
NEG%%Even%if%Civil%Disobedient%Acts%Are%Nonviolent,%They%Put%
the%Protester%in%a%State%of%War.%
%
St. Thomas, we saw, feared that disobedience to the law could lead to scandal and
disturbance. Against this it is argued that civil disobedience does not lead to such possibilities
since it always involves the highest respect for law: "By openly and peacefully disobeying an
unjust law and asking for the penalty, we are saying that we so respect the law that when we
think it is so unjust that in conscience we cannot obey, then we belong in jail until that law is
changed." Several authors insist that it is precisely the civil disobedients' willingness to accept
the penalty that constitutes the force of their advocacy and encourages other people to think
about the wrong that is being protested. One element quite clear in the discussion is that civil
disobedience is always "civil": citizens who are disobedient are fulfilling their
responsibilities to society; the disobedient is not rejecting civil obligations. The honorable
civil disobedient thus sustains a special obligation to pursue the protest in a way that does
not damage property, and certainly in a way that inflicts no direct or serious harm on any
person. While this concept of "civil" is inviting and irenic, it is naive to think that this
nonviolent civil protest is not also a type of "force." One author states the case dramatically:
"Even though your action is non-violent, its first consequence must be to place you and
your opponents in a state of war. For your opponents have only the same sort of choice that
any army has: that of allowing you to continue occupying the heights you have moved onto,
or of applying forcedynamic, active, violent forceto throw you back off them." But
since the civil disobedient peacefully accepts the punishment for the act, it is probably better to
understand the object of the act as not force but pressure, a form of persuasion put on the general
public to correct an abuse.
!
%
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Requires%That%All%Other%Forms%of%
Political%Action%Have%Already%Been%Tried.%
%
Another element of importance for our definition is a factor already implied: disobedience
must always be considered a fined resortafter petitions, boycotts, legislative activity, self-
purification. An eminent example is Gandhi, who believed that civil disobedience properly
carried out could be one of the most moral and efficacious of political methods; but he
understood it as a last resort, fearing always that mass civil disobedience leads to violence.
In reality, it was not so much massive disobedience that Gandhi feared as the possibility of
violence as a form of disobedience. Civil disobedience "properly carried out" supposes, then,
that the normal political appeals have been made in good faith and that the standard
means of redress have been tried. Obviously, therefore, civil disobedience must always be
limited to substantial and clear violations of justice. Archbishop Hunthausen put it well upon
deciding to withhold a portion of his tax payment: I say with deep sorrow that our nuclear war
preparations are the global crucifixion of Jesus. Our nuclear weapons are the final crucifixion of
Jesus, in the extermination of the human family with whom he is one I believe that the present
issue is as serious as any the world has faced. The very existence of humanity is at stake.
!
%
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Often%Verges%on%Violence%and%Creates%
the%Impetus%for%Future%Violent%Acts.%%
%
%
What of Gandhi's fear that violence can occur all too easily? Civil disobedence sometimes
verges on violence: e.g., the protester's body as a disruptive object. It is for this reason that
civil disobedients are sometimes referred to as extremists. In his famous "Letter from
Birmingham City Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. disavowed this objection: "Was not Jesus an
extremist in love... trust and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment?" It is for such
reasons as the verge-of-violence that many authors speak out strongly against any type of
civil disobedience. In his reply to King, Louis Waldman claimed that any violation of law is
an open invitation to others to join in such violations. Explicit in criticism of actual cases of
civil disobedience is this clear challenge: "But if everyone did as you do, the consequences
would be disastrous." To combat the potential negative effects of civil disobedience, then, it is
essential that disobedients ask themselves, before taking any action, what might be the short-
term and long-term consequences of their activity. How serious will be the inconvenience caused
other citizens? How great is the expense incurred by the community? Is there any threat to
persons or property? Is a bad example being set, respect for law decreased, democracy
subverted?
!
NEG%%A%Justification%of%Civil%Disobedience%Opens%Pandora's%Box%
And%Incites%Mass%Chaos.%
%
Let us not restrict our thinking to the area of civil rights. Think of the persons who feel
they have the right to interfere with the launching of a Polaris submarine; think of the
people who demand the right to sail into an area restricted for military testing; think of the
people who feel, as some have in England, that they have the right to publicize their
governments military secrets to the detriment of national security and survival. The plain
fact of human nature is that the organized disobedience of masses stirs up the primitive.
This has been true of a soccer crowd and a lynch mob. Psychologically and psychiatrically
it is very clear that no manno matter how well intentionedcan keep group passions in
control. Civil disobedience is an ad hoc device at best, and ad hoc measures in a law society
are dangerous. Civil disobedience under these circumstances is at best deplorable and at
worst destructive. Specific disobedience breeds disrespect and promotes general dis-
obedience. Our grievances must be settled in the courts and not in the streets. Muscle is no
substitute for morality. Civil disobedience is negative, where we require affirmative
processes. We must insist that men use their minds and not their biceps. But, while the emphasis
must be on the three Rs of reason, responsibility, and respect, we cannot accept self-
righteousness, complacency, and noninvolvement. We reject hypocritical tokenism. We have an
affirmative and daily duty to eliminate discrimination and provide opportunityfull opportunity
and meaningful equal justice for all our people.
NEG:%Harms%to%Democratic%Values% Novice%Topic%2013%
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Inconsistent%with%Democratic%
Values.%
The main theoretical question in this thesis concerns the justification for civil disobedience in a
democracy because understanding how civil disobedience might be justified theoretically enables
us to see how to reconcile civil disobedience and democracy in practice. Many scholars have
remarked that civil disobedience is inconsistent with democratic values. For instance, Joseph
Raz argues that the need for civil disobedience is confined to illiberal societies because in
liberal societies people enjoy extensive freedom and have many ways to influence the
government. Thus, there is no need for them to resort to civil disobedience to express their
views. Other opponents of civil disobedience see it as a threat to democratic society and the
forerunner of violence and anarchy.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%is%Not%Justified%if%Citizens%Have%the%
Right%to%Participation.%
The most popular attempt in the history of endeavors to reject civil disobedience is probably the
one which relies on the rights of participation. The right of participation, that is, the right of
having a share in the making of the laws, is considered by some scholars as the right of rights.
It is maintained that since all citizens in a democracy enjoy the right of participation, and
since all proposed legislation is aired in public before its enactment, and since it is voted
into law by representatives of the people, a special obligation devolves upon the democratic
citizen to accept this legislation as binding: The dissenter incurs the obligation when he
participates in the decision-procedure together with other members who are opposed to the
dissenters views, but are prepared to accept and obey whatever decision the procedure
produces. By participating in the process, one has consented to obey the final outcome even
if it is against his will. Thus, it is claimed that where people can exercise their participating
rights they have no need again to resort to civil disobedience.
!
NEG%%Compulsory%Voting%is%Completely%Unjustifiable%in%a%
Democracy.%
Very often, arguments against civil disobedience in democracy are based upon appeals to
principles of majority rule. Thus, it is asserted that the most important goal of democracy is
that the people exercise the power of government. The most practical way of ensuring this is
to allow for free elections in which the majority rules. To violate the law is to supplant
majority rule with minority rule and to make democracy impossible. Civil disobedience is
unjustifiable not simply because it breaks the law, but because in breaking the law
deliberately it violates the procedural rules than an operating democracy pants may seek to
influence community decision making, are the foundation of a just government.' Addressing
himself specifically to the issue of majority rule Rex Martin argues that part of being a good
citizen in democracy requires the citizen to adhere to the principle of democratic authority,
that all decisions are made by elected representatives, and ultimately by majority vote, in
accordance with established procedural rules, and that all persons are bound by such decision.
!
NEG%%Civil%Disobedience%Threatens%The%Efficacy%And%Stability%
Of%A%Democracy.%%
Schaeffer, Chris. "The Limits of Civil Disobedience." Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate
Research. 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.
<http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=respublica>.
Although these ' exciting' and confrontational forms of disobedience may produce quick
and rapid results, they merely perpetuate the extreme measures for all future forms of
disobedience. Fortas explains this claim more eloquently when he declares, Unremitting
pressure ... will undoubtedly expedite response ... but the reaction to repeated acts of violence
may be repression instead of remedy. The extreme measures of civil disobedience will be met
by more extreme measures to suppress the unlawful and insubordinate actions of the
participants. Furthermore, Violence is never defensible - and it has never succeeded in
securing massive reform in an open society where there were alternative methods of
winning the minds of others to one's cause and securing changes in the government or its
policies. If extreme measures are continually utilized to overthrow the government, then there
will be no peaceful transitions from one ruling party to the next. As a direct and dire result, the
legitimacy of a democratic institution is undermined for the violent and coercive forms of
majority or minority revolution. Instead, it is basically conscience, justice, and a long and
entirely justified view of national interest that impel the ... majority to rectify an intolerable
situation. This mirrors Socrates' belief, which states that you must do whatever your city and
your country commands, or else persuade it that justice is on your side; but violence against
mother or father is an unholy act, and it is a far greater sin against your country. Ultimately, a
democratic government is an arena for debate, contemplation, and compromise in which
the conflicting ideologies and beliefs of a diverse citizenry are negotiated to further human
values and justice.
!
!
NEG%%Absolving%Ourselves%of%the%Obligation%to%the%State%Should%
Be%Difficult%To%Do%And%Should%Only%be%a%Last%Resort.%
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/192202>.
On Hegel's view, discharging our political obligations is not something we feel forced to do;
rather, doing so feels natural-is second nature to us-if the state truly is our ethical
substance, if it is our home. For Hegel, turning abstract principles like utility, fairness, or
consent obscures the real basis for our obligations. It also misdirects us when we seek
criteria for when our obligations dissolve: obligations dissolve not simply for lack of
benefits received; they dissolve when the state no longer is our home. On Hegel's view, when
the bond between members of the ethical substance breaks, political obligations vanish.
Though much of the scholarship on Hegel's philosophy of right over the past three decades has
emphasized the liberal strands in Hegel's political theory, little has been written about the extent
if any to which Hegel leaves room for justified disobedience or for rebellion against the
traditions and practices of one's community. When the issue is faced, most scholars, drawing less
on the liberal and more on the conservative strands of Hegel's thought, conclude that Hegel
leaves little or no room at all. Among recent commentators, Carol Pateman says that Hegel's
political philosophy implies unquestioned and unconditional political obedience.
!
NEG%%We%Are%Obligated%To%Follow%The%Laws%Of%A%State%If%They%
Provide%Rights.%
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/192202>.
Hegel sometimes discounts the revolutionary implications of our righto know the good of the
law and the critical edge of the principle of rationality: we have the right to agree or be
convinced that the law is right, or rational, but on the other side ... the state cannot wait for the
understanding of others (Rph VI, 4:352, 25-9). So long as the laws and practices of the
modem state are rational, there is no excuse or justification for the citizen to oppose them
(Cf. Rph VI, 4:352, 30-353, 2). Here Hegel's position is that we must not oppose the laws if
the laws are right. Everything depends on the content of custom and law. Hegel does leave
open the possibility that one's conscience can be better than right and good in actuality
and custom -as he thought was the case for Socrates in his Athens (PR 138 Rem., p. 166).
Hegel gives great weight to the authority of the state and of custom. But Hegel does not leave
the individual confronted with an unjust state powerless. To Hegel, we are obligated to
obey the law if the state is our ethical substance; if we are at home in it; if its practices,
institutions, and laws are rational; if the free will comes into existence in it. But in a
passage from a set of notes of Hegel's lectures on political philosophy taken by one of his
students, Hegel declares that if my free will does not come into existence in the state, I have no
corresponding duty to the state: Man also has the right that his free will should be realized, it is
his own, and if it does not come into existence, then he is not bound ... insofar as the free will as
such does not come into existence, there is neither right nor duty.
!
NEG%%Social%Dislocation%is%a%More%Effective%Means%of%Creating%
Social%Change.%
%
papers>.
Thirdly, sometimes the person exercising civil disobedience elects not to appeal to the
federal norm, but rather to acquiesce in the legality of the state rule and to take his
punishment under that rule, so as to concentrate attention on the wickedness of the rule
without any distracting considerations of federal law and so as to emphasize publicly his
feeling of membership in the local community and his desire to seek conciliation at that
level. These three points are no more than explanations of a mistake, an important mistake to be
sure, for it seems to confront the observer of racial protest with a philosophic and political
problem he actually need not face, but a clear mistake none the less. A fourth explanation goes
deeper. There is after all, it can be asserted, some functional similarity between true
disobedience to law and disobedience to what was long thought to be law, to what is taken
to be law still by many of the people concerned, to what is enforced as law by duly
constituted authorities, even to customs so widespread as to be in some sense tantamount to
law. To take Mr. Bayard Rustin's phrase, "social dislocation" on a very great scale is being
brought about, and the dislocation in many communities is as great as any that would be
brought about by some sheer disobediences to valid law. To undertake such dislocation is
itself a grave matter. If every man and every group used all the room the federal law gave it to
clash with local custom and local authority, the resulting dislocation would jar our states and our
towns to the point of virtual fragmentation. Most of us are content to go along with local
customs and local authority in most cases, insisting neither on our full federal
constitutional rights nor on our own conceptions of propriety. The case for refraining in
general from producing social dislocation reproduces in low relief the case for obedience to
!
law. One must look, I should think, for a special moral urgency before deciding to insist on
one's rights against strong community feeling, and the means adopted, it could be hoped,
would be means apt to move the conflict toward a consensus, toward a new and better
relocation, instead of widening it, insofar as such choice of means can consist with
maintenance of principle. The structural similarity of these two considerations to those that
might govern, respectively, the solemn decision whether law is to be disobeyed and what
the mode of such disobedience is to be tends to result in confusion as to the nature of the
norm disobeyed. Where the contemplation of social dislocation even in aid of law sends the
mind to considerations so much like those raised by civil disobedience properly so called, it is
perhaps natural that the two things, though so different in their ultimate placing in respect to the
legal order, should be thought of as much the same.
!
NEG%%It%Is%Impossible%For%Individuals%To%Effectively%Protest%The%
Government%While%Supporting%The%Government.%%
%
papers>.
My first point here is constitutional in the most important sense, in the sense that it has to do
with the manner in which this federal union is composed and with definition of the loyalties
which a union so composed demands. When true civil disobedience occurs in a simple,
unitary nation, each citizen's loyalty is put to a severe test. He cannot dissociate himself
from those who are enforcing the law except by a radical break with his political allegiance.
He cannot pay part of the sheriff's salary, part of the judge's salary and wash his hands of
the matter. More important, he cannot ask the sheriff and the judge to stand unsupported
in protecting the order in which he acquiesces and from which he takes the benefits of
civilization. He may hedge and evade, as almost all of us so often do, but, if he would be
consistent and fair, he must either join the disobedient or support the keepers of the law. Our
federalism radically changes this. I need not dwell on the purely technical aspects of the
distinction. In most cases of mere massive defiance of law without relation to any warranted
national goals, most of us, while aware that we are not members of the body politic of a
sister state, would wish as a matter of policy to see the national power employed to assist in
restoring the rule of law. But I submit that it makes all the difference that a campaign of
civil disobedience is mounted in the sister state against a misuse of the power of that state
to resist and thwart the law of the nation. On that matter, no American citizen, certainly
none outside the state affected, is inconstant to his political allegiance in wishing well to the
disobedient. What a paradox it would be if the nation as a whole thought itself obliged to
support a state regime against civil disobedience aimed at nothing in the world but making the
national law prevail!
NEG:%Civil%Disobedience%Failures% Novice%Topic%2013%
!
NEG%%Acts%Of%Historical%"Civil%Disobedience,"%Like%the%
Montgomery%Bus%Boycott%Are%Not%True%Civil%
Disobedience.%%
Black, Charles. "The Problem of the Compatibility of Civil Disobedience with American
papers>.
In all such cases, great or small, there is an element of claimed legal right and hence of an
implied submission to rather than defiance of the order of law. There is, usually, a strong
admixture of a moral in addition to a legal claim; the thing combatted, as in Montgomery, is felt
to be wrong as well as unlawful. Nor is the legal claim always clear or even explicit; it is likely,
for example, that the lady whose refusal to move back in the bus set the Montgomery movement
going was consciously motivated rather by a realization that the request was an affront to her
humanity than by an apprehension that her legal rights were being violated. But even this, the
extremist case, the case of the person protesting injustice without thought to law, but under
circumstances which do in fact found a tenable (and in her case a valid) legal claim, is very far
indeed from the case of pure civil disobedience, of considered disobedience to what is known to
be valid law under the applicable legal system.
!
NEG%%Achieving%Righteous%Civil%Disobedience%is%Impossible.%
I am also deeply troubled by certain concepts which have sought acceptability: the idea of
"Freedom Now" and the idea of "Righteous Civil Disobedience." In my opinion both terms
are semantic traps and only add heat to the problems of freedom and justice for all. It is a
further semantic trap to divide the discourse on civil disobedience into a stereotype of
liberalism vs. conservatism. "Freedom Now" is an illusion. The desire for self-expression can
be satisfied only in an atmosphere of freedom, and freedom is not absolute. It exists only within
the confines of the necessary restraining measures of society. I wish it were possible to have
heaven on earth. I wish it were possible to have the ideals of justice and freedom in all their per-
fect form at this moment. The cry for immediacy is the cry for impossibility. It is a cry
without memory or perspective. Immediacy is impossible in a society of human beings.
What is possible is to continue patiently to build the structures that permit the devel-
opment of better justice.
!
NEG%a% Instances%of%Delayed%Justice%Are%Not%a%Reason%to%Use%
Civil%Disobedience.%
Let us also beware of pat phrases such as justice delayed is justice denied. Justice delayed is
no excuse for antijustice or the destruction of the law system. The fact that particular
reforms have not been completely achieved does not justify rejecting legal meansthe only
hope for lasting achievement. The demand for equality cannot be converted into a fight for
superiority. We must be for equality under the rule of law. We are for freedom under law,
not freedom against the law. Let us also avoid unreal questions such as whether justice is
more important than order or vice versa. Order is the sine qua non of the constitutional
system if there is to be any possibility for long-term justice based on public consensus.

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The Evidence Standard _________________________________________ 3

Cards for the Negative___________________________________ 107

Topic Analysis by Brian Hodge

Resolutional Analysis 101

1) That the phrase that man refers to a certain individual,

The Resolution as a Prescriptive Statement

Now, enumerating truth values of a prescriptive statement is immediately more difficult

1) Civil disobedience in a democracy

A Rawlsian View of the Affirmative

A Kantian View of the Negative

About Brian Hodge

It is important to note that civil disobedience has to be justified within a democracy, as

Be aware of the A before democracy. A is a single article denoting a single entity

Morally justified: As I mentioned earlier in the analysis, it is extremely important to

Affirmative Case Ideas

Negative Case Ideas

Conclusion and Advice

About Jack Ave

It is understandable why an authoritarian regime might punish the civil disobedient

The significant role of civil disobedience in the establishment of democracy is persuasively

A democratic system has a special obligation to tolerate civil disobedience. Civil

Note, however, that the moral permissibility of continuing to contest a democratically

Although definitions of civil disobedience abound, they generally concur on the

Furthermore, although here I am only speculating, democratic disobedience appears

The tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience has tended to be justied as a form of

Civil disobedience, as I will understand it here, consists in deliberate disobedience to one or

One potential source of resistance to the recognition of a liberty right to advocate

In my opinion, the historical development of civil disobedience might roughly be divided

If we abstract from these contentions, a less problematic definition of civil disobedience

Up to now, I have been talking about the master-problem of civil disobedience as it is

The supposed challenge to Rawls hinges on whether or he has provided us with a

Elliston, Frederick. "Civil Disobedience and Whistleblowing: A Comparative Appraisal of Two

Secondly, no specific provision in the Constitution binds us to take any simple

This First Amendment right is often appealed to by disobedience demonstrators,

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