Civil Disobedience, Punishment, and Injustice

2003

This article compares and contrasts the way Gandhi understands the right to civil disobedience with the way this right is understood by some contemporary liberals. Some of the implications of the right to civil disobedience are also discussed. The right to civil disobedience implies that the authorities should extend some tolerance to civil disobedients not only when they are correct, but also when they are reasonably mistaken in their views. Tolerance here does not involve preventing civil disobedients from breaking the law, and implies that when civil disobedients break the law, they have a claim not to be punished or have their punishment reduced. Of course such claims have to be balanced against other considerations, such as the need for deterrence.

Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 2018

The article argues that civil disobedience must be perceived as an action with progressive and political significance, thus reflecting, from a Kantian perspective, the recognizable paradox between morality and law, as expressed in Kant's moral and political writings. Hence, this article firstly analyzes on which grounds Kant claims rebellion to be unjust. Secondly, it examines how and if people, from a Kantian point of view, can defend themselves against an unjust sovereignty. On this basis, it argues that 'civil disobedience' can be juxtaposed with the Kantian idea of 'freedom of the pen,' thus having the same function as a political corrective. However, two questions are still to be answered, namely if civil disobedience must be punished, and if civil disobedience as a political corrective can be justified? By considering civil disobedience primarily as political agency, both questions are answered in the affirmative.

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 2021

Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. However, adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience may lead to a highly problematic theoretical consequence: the debilitation of civil disobedience. This is because, according to the novel analysis I propose, civil disobedience primarily functions as a costly social signal. It is effective by being reliable, reliable by being costly, and costly primarily by being punished. My analysis will highlight a distinctive feature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two paradoxical implications. First, the instability of the moral status of both civil disobedience and its punishment to the extent where the state may be left with no permissible course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience. Second, by refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience, the state may render uncivil disobedience--illegal political activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience--potentially permissible.

(Des)troços: revista de pensamento radical, 2022

Adopting a genealogical methodology, this paper aims to unveil the historical intricacies of civil concept and the liberal model of civil disobedience. As suggested by Hanson, there has been a Resistance to civil government later republished as Civil disobedience that goes from its editors until Gandhi. By the same token, there has been a second process, not of selective appropriation per se, but of colonization in which authors of the liberal model of civil disobedience impose a series of theoretical constraints in the form of constitutive elements that ought to be fulfilled in order for a political movement to be considered a legitimate case of civil disobedience. This has resulted in civil disobedients being required to recognize the legitimacy of legal and political systems and to demand changes only within the boundaries of the rule of law. Conversely, we suggest a different and radical approach to civil disobedience, one that acknowledges that civil-base, i.e., determined from real political actions and not necessarily centered on legal foundations or normative status.

Criminal Law and Philosophy , 2017

While philosophers usually agree that there is room for civil disobedience in democratic societies, they disagree as to the proper justification and role of civil disobedience. The field has so far been divided into two camps-the liberal approach on the one hand, which associates the justification and role of civil disobedience with the good of justice, and the democratic approach on the other, which connects them with the value and good of democracy. William

Ratio Juris, 2004

This paper aims to approach the subject of civil disobedience from the triple perspective of the ethical, the legal, and the political. The novelty of our focus resides in the priority given to the legal aspect of civil disobedience, especially to the possible legal justification of civil disobedience, a perspective that is generally overlooked in analysing the phenomenon. This is where the Achilles heel is to be found, though it may provide unexploited insights into the issue from which significant conclusions can be drawn.

Ethics, 2008

2016

Joseph Raz has argued that in liberal states there is no moral right to disobedience. Raz claims that all states ought to be what he calls "liberal states," which do not require a moral right to civil disobedience. Broadly, my focus in this paper is on describing how civil disobedience can be understood as a moral right to be included in the framework of political rights recognized in liberal states. I try to demonstrate that Raz's argument proceeds from a limited understanding of political rights and political actions, and suggest that his conclusion is invalid or extremely exaggerated. I advance a tentative argument about the importance of this moral right to the political process of deliberative democracies, and of its inclusion in limited form among political participation rights.

2009