Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.

Contention one: civil disobedience undermines the democratic process. As members of a democracy, citizens have say in the creation of the laws, thus they consent to them. For civil disobedience to destroy those laws is unjust, Carl Cohen explains "Every citizen of a lawful government, then, has a most important duty to obey its laws. That is true whatever the form of government " Where each citizen has a proportionate voice in the making and the framing of laws (either directly or through representatives), his acceptance of this role as partial legislator commits him yet more strongly to abide the laws of that body." Cohen explains clearly how citizens" voices are what shape a just government. To allow minorities to un-proportionately voice their ideas by side stepping laws destroys the democratic system. Second, This articulates the key problem with civil disobedience. Every law may look just or unjust to different perspectives however civil disobedience would allow any person to act against any law they didn"t like, regardless of majority consent or legal means. This opens the society as a whole up for anarchy as laws become devoid of meaning and laws are broken meaninglessly. Contention one: civil disobedience can support legitimate and illegitimate causes. The action "civil disobedience" has no inherent moral quality because it can yield both good and bad results. Similarly "driving" can be both just and unjust, on one hand you can drive someone to the hospital and on the other hand you can hit the person with your car so they have to go to the hospital. Thus, while there may be legitimate outcomes of civil disobedience we must also look at what else it would justify. It would justify any citizen acting out against any law they felt needed change. The inherent repercussions could involve murder, riots, terrorism and more. Because civil disobedience always violates the rights of citizens who have come together to agree upon laws, it always harms rights. However, civil disobedience does not necessarily guarantee rights as it is often just a tool for people to circumvent the democratic process. Indeed, civil disobedience hinders rather than helps the fight for justice. Leon Jaworski in the Morality and the Law, 1988, p. 87 elaborates One of the most appalling and frightening of the trends in recent years is the self-serving practice of choosing which laws or court orders to obey and which to defy. The preachments that generate this attitude are cancerously dangerous to our system of government under law. To rest upon or hide behind the claim that if one"s conscience speaks to the contrary, justification exists for ignoring laws or decrees are but to say that the rule of law is not to be the governing yardstick of our society"s conduct. It is dangerous to allow people to choose the laws they obey and there is no way to judge whether or not that law is unjust. Contention three: there are more legitimate avenues than civil disobedience. Susan Tiefenbrun explains The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees us the right to dissent, to protest, to assemble peaceably, to criticize a law or government, and to oppose a law. The more difficult question is how one may permissibly dissent if a person's first legal and moral imperative is to obey the law. Using means of opposition and dissent that are permissible under the U.S. system of law will not subject a dissenter to punishment by the state. The right to dissent may be exercised by the use of written and spoken words, by acts or conduct such as picketing, "peaceable" mass assembly, sit-ins and demonstrations, which are referred to as "symbolic speech." The basic means of permissible protest under the U.S. system is the right to vote, "the right to organize and to elect new officials to enact and administer the law." And the list goes on, lobbying, writing letters, going through the courts, etc. can all achieve the desired ends of changing a law without the negative harms of civil disobedience. Each is different from civil disobedience in one key way; they don"t require breaking the law to change it. Thus, because Civil disobedience can support clearly unjust things, because there are alternatives that legally and legitimately achieve the desired ends, and because Civil disobedience twists and destroys the democratic process, I urge a negative ballot. Q95; Negative Evidence: The importance of law and social order Emil Brunner, Justice and the Social Order, 1945, p. 175.R32; In a state of anarchy, no justice is possible, since "the devoutest of men cannot live in peace if his wicked neighbor does not so desire." But under a unified coercive power, however little it may trouble about justice, justice is at any rate possible since the mutual use of force by individuals is eliminated by the State monopolization of power. Noel B. Reynolds, "Grounding the Rule of Law," Ratio Juris, v. 2, no. 1, March 1989, p. 5.R32; Law addresses the problem of human nature at two levels. It provides authoritarian rules of conduct for all to observe in the pursuit of their own ends, rules which provide order in that they establish legitimate expectations for such conduct. Furthermore, these procedures and other official structures can be consciously constructed in ways that discourage inventive self-seekers from perverting the designedly neutral process of law to private advantage. Susan Tiefenbrun, Associate Professor Of Law At Thomas Jefferson School Of Law In San Diego, California, 2003; "Article: Civil Disobedience And The U.S. Constitution." Southwestern University Law Review. 32 Sw. U. L. Rev. 677 There is much opposition to civil disobedience. For the past two thousand years, philosophers have asked themselves whether one has an obligation to obey a law that is unjust. Scholars have grounded an obligation to obey unjust laws in six different legal theories. These [*694] include the duty to obey the law out of gratitude to an existing legal system (i.e. Socrates and Plato's Crito); the duty to obey the law because of the individual's contractual agreement or consent to obey (i.e. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau); the duty to obey because of the negative consequences of disobedience; the duty to obey out of fairness; the duty to obey in order to support just institutions (i.e. H.L.A. Hart and John Rawl's theory), and the duty to obey in order to support your community (i.e. Ronald Dworkin's theory). Susan Tiefenbrun, Associate Professor Of Law At Thomas Jefferson School Of Law In San Diego, California, 2003; "Article: Civil Disobedience And The U.S. Constitution." SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW. 32 SW. U. L. REV. 677 Another argument, based on the Machiavellian principle that laudable ends do not justify purely illegal means, is often used by law and order supporters who refuse to consider the benign motivation of civil disobedient. They argue that to legitimize civil disobedience is contrary to a system governed by respect for the rule of law. n138 Erwin Griswold, cited by Dworkin, believes that it is of the essence of law that it is equally applied to all, that it binds all alike, irrespective of personal motive. For this reason, one who contemplates civil disobedience out of moral conviction should not be surprised and must not be bitter if a criminal conviction ensues ... organized society cannot endure on any other basis. n139 M. B. E. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, 1996R32;"The Duty To Obey The Law." From D. Patterson, ed., COMPANION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND LEGAL THEORY, 465-74 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Few issues in jurisprudence have received so much attention in recent years as whether citizens have a distinctive moral duty to obey the law. Yet the differences among the disputants might well seem slender to the unprofessional eye. No one holds that the duty is absolute: even its most passionate advocates allow that it is sometimes morally permissible to disobey the law,! as when abolitionists aided runaway slaves before the American Civil War. But neither does anyone advocate open or frequent disobedience. Those who doubt the supposed duty yet hold that we very often have a strong moral reason to do what the law requires independently of its commands, e.g., not to assault, cheat or rob others. The doubters allow that we are obligated to obey whenever the law has established patterns of conduct that are dangerous to depart from, such as driving to the left in Great Britain. They believe that disobedience is permissible only when there is no independent moral reason to obey or when the weight of independent reasons favors disobedience; and they do not suppose that in reasonably just societies these conditions obtain often. Finally, those who are skeptical about the duty of obedience nonetheless prize the great social benefits that quite obviously can only be achieved through government; and they believe that one which is reasonably just deserve! s its citizens' cooperation and support. It therefore seems probable that the putative duty's advocates and disbelievers alike would virtually always agree in their judgments of particular illegal conduct--or at least that any differences between them would not flow from their disagreement about the philosophical issue. The importance of majority rule