Essay On Civil Disobedience

The resolution I have been researching for the past month is “Resolved: Civil Disobedience in a Democracy is morally justified.” Although there is no single, agreed upon definition, many definitions are similar. Civil disobedience is usually defined along the lines of refusing to obey certain rules and laws as a form of non-violent protest of an unjust law, or any law that one opposes, and is often done to bring attention to said law. Through my research, I have found a number of arguments for civil disobedience within a democracy, as well as arguments against it.

There are many arguments that civil disobedience is morally permissible within a democracy, but the most convincing argument is that the publicity of the act helps force negotiations with officials by highlighting the unfairness of an unjust or oppressive law. Sometimes, legal processes are insufficient to change a law, and complaints made are often ignored, such being the case of many voting rights protesters. Civil disobedience is used as a last resort, to force people to reconsider the status quo and address the issue at hand. An oft used example is the Civil Rights Movement. Though MLK and others engaged in peaceful protests, officials and police responded with violence in an attempt to suppress them. Their barbarity, however, brought more attention to the
One of the most convincing I heard is that civil disobedience can be disrupting to the government and day to day life. Even one of the most used examples of civil disobedience, marching, can potentially have negative effects. People can’t get to their jobs or simply do what they need to do. Sometimes it even causes violence. Disobedients may not participate directly in acts of violence, but there are often unforeseen effects, and violence is one of them. This could have the unintended result of the very thing being protested against being made