Is Rawls' civil disobedience effective?

In Section 55 of A Theory of Justice, Rawls defines civil disobedience and designs his theory based on a case of a “nearly just society” that is well-ordered and a legitimately established democratic authority. Civil disobedience is considered “a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government” (320). If this situation arises even after a society has agreed on his two principles of justice, one question I have is how this nearly just society would allow for an act that violates justice to occur in the first place. Assuming everyone is acting in accordance with his principles, shouldn’t there be general agreement on what constitutes as just/unjust? 


Secondly, if violence is not an option and a person has already attempted and failed the normal appeals to make their claim and will not do so again in the future out of expectation of the same outcome, what specifically about Rawls’ civil disobedience (an appeal to the public/majority that holds political power) would make a difference? In the end it is still up to the same people who ignored the previous legal protests and demonstrations to decide on getting rid of the unjust law/reforming the system. Would civil disobedience then just be another way to get the majority’s attention? If the majority knows the person committing to civil disobedience will accept the consequences of another rejection, what would convince them that their approach to justice is wrong? 


In my previous philosophy class, we read Ronald Dworkin’s “Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest” where Dworkin distinguished between three types of civil disobedience as integrity-based, justice-based, and policy-based. Integrity-based disobedience is when the law requires someone to do what their conscience forbids, justice-based is when a person has an overall goal of acting to oppose and reverse an unjust program where the majority is oppressing a minority, and policy-based is acting on the belief that a policy is bad not just for a minority but for the entirety of the population. I was wondering where Rawls’ account would fall under these categories, and thought it would be a mix of justice-based and policy-based, depending on the situation. Using the persuasive strategy of either, the person who feels a law is unjust would hope to convince the majority to listen to their arguments in the hopes the majority will change its mind. Since the person is ultimately still willing to accept the majority’s will regardless of what happens, their form of civil disobedience may be considered more justified.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Development as White Saviorism

Sen’s take on viewing development as freedom seems coherent when the developing body is a part of the community that is being developed. There are troublesome aspects (like the implicit acceptance of unequal distribution of freedoms), but those can be justified and or fixed with minor alterations. However, the account’s flaws become prominent when applied to situations where the developing body is external to the community that is being developed. Because Sen does not factor in the context of when the development occurs and does not outline who can even be a developer, his account would allow for white saviorism.  The issue is not with what Sen’s account includes, but what it does not. Sen’s account does not argue for an equal distribution of freedom. While he believes we should expand freedoms in the most effective way, if this does not expand freedoms equally, it is not clear that Sen would view that as a bad thing. This leaves room for marginalized people in society to be even mor
Read more

I used to be a libertarian and i think Nozick is full of shit

In Anarchy State and Utopia, Nozick argues that patterned principles of justice will require “continuous interference with people’s lives” to continually realize their pattern of distributive justice (162). As an alternative, he argues for an unpatterned principle of distributive justice (PDJ) based on the principle of entitlement. I want to examine some of the key assumptions and concepts he makes in his account in this blog post.  Nozick’s entitlement theory views just modes of interacting with one’s holdings as necessarily leading to a just pattern of distribution. Namely, once justice in acquisition and justice in transfer have been achieved, the resulting distribution is just. As Nozick puts is “whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just” (151). He also touches on “the rectification of injustice in holdings” but goes on to say that the exact nature of that principle is unclear and not discussed by him or others (152). This seems like a bit of a dodge to me.
Read more

The other face of the father of capitalism?

I found reading Smith's theory of Moral Sentiments interesting because a lot of it felt nothing like what he's purported to be according to all the "father of capitalism" stuff. I see how he developed something like the invisible hand because of how he develops his theory: based on observation. He makes empirical claims above human behavior in relation to which actions we approve and disapprove based on how much we can sympathize with the actor. Both this theory and the one about the invisible hand seems to be an explanation about an observed phenomena.  While I think that the method he uses to develop his theories are similar, the ideas present in this piece seems radically different than ideas on capitalism. The ideas that he present in Chapter two remind me a lot of Kantian ethics. The specific passage that reminded me of this was:  "When he views himself in the light in which he is conscious that others will view him, he sees that to them he is but one of the
Read more