In a democracy, civil disobedience is an appropriate weapon in the fight for justice

Yes I am, I tried policy for a while last year but I couldn't stand having the same resolution the whole year. I would like to start this round by attacking your points, I will then move on to my own and show you the flaws with your rebuttals. 1) First I would like to call into question your definition of the word justice. Having looked through all of the definitions on Dictionary.com (which is where I assume you got your definition), it is the only one out of the four definitions that could be applied in this situation that mentions "lawfulness," most of the definitions are based off "righteousness" or morality. It also seems that you are misunderstanding the resolution, it does not ask whether civil disobedience is justified it asks whether civil disobedience is an appropriate weapon to achieve justice. The word you should really be looking at here is "appropriate" so I will define that "suitable or fitting for a particular purpose, person, occasion, etc." There is nothing about lawfulness there so I see your contention null and void. 2) So if I understand you correctly here this is basically a counterpoint to my second contention and that we should interpret this resolution extremely literally , Correct? You seem to be saying that my examples of how civil disobedience has worked in the past are not true examples at all because the US was not a democracy even though later, when attacking my second point, you stated "Our country is a 'democracy', and we have the right to a SPEEDY trial." This seems very contradictory to me therefore I see that point null and void also. 3) In the opening sentence of this contention you make the huge jump that civil disobedience can lead to anarchy and then don't really tell me how. So I will tell you why it wont. In the past there have been many acts of civil disobedience yet no anarchy. Some examples are: Ghandi's acts of civil disobedience in India and all of the examples that I have already given from the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Whether these examples are ones from a 'democracy' is really irrelevant because there is no logical reason that civil disobedience would be more likely to break out in anarchy in a democracy than any other type of government which makes this point also null and void. 4) This may be partially true, but the vast majority of instances of civil disobedience do not erupt in violence. It may seem that most of these protests end with violence, but that is only due to the fact that it makes a better story for the press to write about. In addition, you could also say that many other things, that are perfectly legal, have lead to violence in just as many, if not more instances. For some examples: sporting events, alcohol, and gangs have caused many instances of violence. Both of these reasons make this contention null and void also. 5) While it may be true that in the end segregation and the theory of "separate but equal" were put down by the courts, these laws would never even have been called into question if civil disobedience was not used by people like Rosa Parks and MLK (yes he used civil disobedience also, which is how he ended up in jail in the first place). Now on to rebuilding my own points- You say that Rosa Parks did not employ civil disobedience under a democracy. As I have already stated, about two paragraphs later you clearly state that the US is a democracy. Rosa Parks used civil disobedience in the United State so again your arguments are contradictory here. It is also not all that relevant whether these examples that I have given were from a democracy, the point is that they worked so I think on this contention you are really missing the point. I will again bring up that in arguing my contention here you say that the US is a democracy, which clashes with the rest of your case. Also you say that people in the US you have a right to a "quick and SPEEDY trial." While this may be stated in the constitution, it is rarely true. After Brown vs the Board of Education, the case that said that the idea of 'separate but equal' was not acceptable, it took 16 years for 'separate but equal' laws in areas not concerning the school system to disappear. You also say that it would be "easier to obey the law and get your point across then not obey the law and get your point across." This is not only false but it is not what is easier that matters it is what is more effective. When I talk about civil disobedience "working" my definition of 'working' could be many things ranging from: it raised awareness that a law is unjust and getting the law tried in a court (because that will always be the place where the problem will really get resolved), to, in a true democracy, getting the law in question on a voting ballot for the people to vote on and hopefully change. OK first off your analogy with the bank robber is outrageous because I'm almost positive that robbers are not protesting the law that thievery is illegal, they are simply trying to make money. Also, I have looked through many different definitions of 'democracy' and nowhere have I found that "Laws that violate the constitution aren't 'in a democracy'." The most frequent definition that I've found is "a form of government in which the citizens of a state vote directly on all governmental affairs." So I think that until you can find a definition that says laws cannot be passed unless they are parallel to the constitution I think your restriction that I "can not make this argument" is also null and void. Thank you for debating. I think that I've learned a lot from this and now I wish I had allowed for more rounds.