Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience by Kimberley Brownlee

By Kimberley Brownlee

Arguing for the ethical and felony defensibility of conscientious disobedience, and especially civil disobedience, this e-book first examines the morality of judgment of right and wrong and conscientiousness after which the legality of conscientious breach of legislations.

Part I specializes in the morality of judgment of right and wrong and conscientiousness. those are relatively ignored innovations in modern ethical and criminal conception, notwithstanding they're vital to functional debates concerning the ethics of conflict, healthcare, and political participation, between others. The e-book disambiguates the descriptive suggestion of conscientiousness as honest conviction from the evaluative idea of conscience as real ethical responsiveness. this offers upward thrust to a communicative precept of conscientiousness (CPC), in keeping with which honest ethical conviction calls for not just that we act constantly with our ideals and make common ethical decisions, but in addition that we no longer search to avert the implications of doing so and be keen to speak our convictions to others.

The CPC informs the consequent dialogue of individuals' rights and tasks inside a liberal democracy. against this with general liberal theorizing, the booklet exhibits that individuals who have interaction within the communicative perform of certainly restricted civil disobedience have a greater declare to an ethical correct to conscientious motion than do those who have interaction in non-communicative, deepest, or evasive 'conscientious' objection.

Part II argues that civil disobedience is mostly extra defensible than own disobedience. The publication explores putative criminal defences - a demands-of-conviction defence and a need defence - and argues that every applies extra without problems to civil disobedience than to non-public disobedience. The e-book responds to issues approximately strategic-action, democracy, festival of values, and proportionality, all of which fail to remember the communicative nature of honest conviction and underestimate the ability of democratic legislations to realize the legitimacy and value of values except literal compliance with the legislation.

The booklet concludes via highlighting a parallel among the communicative goals of civil disobedience and the communicative goals of lawful punishment. basically the previous could declare to have discussion goals, which increases problems for the justifiability of punishing civil disobedience.

Oxford felony Philosophy publishes the simplest new paintings in philosophically-oriented felony concept. It commissions and solicits monographs in all branches of the topic, together with works on philosophical concerns in all parts of private and non-private legislations, and within the nationwide, transnational, and foreign geographical regions; stories of the character of legislations, criminal associations, and criminal reasoning; remedies of difficulties in political morality as they endure on legislations; and explorations within the nature and improvement of criminal philosophy itself. The sequence represents various traditions of suggestion yet continuously with an emphasis on rigour and originality. It units the traditional in modern jurisprudence.

Show description

Read Online or Download Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience PDF

Best administrative law books

Reforming the French Law of Obligations: Comparative Reflections on the Avant-Projet De Reforme Du Droit Des Obligations Et De La Prescription, ('the Avant-projet ... Institute of European and Comparative Law)

The 2005 Avant-projet de r? forme du droit des tasks et de los angeles prescription — additionally dubbed the Avant-projet Catala — indicates the main far-reaching reform of the French Civil Code because it got here into strength in 1804. It studies significant elements of agreement legislation, the legislations of delict, and the legislation of unjustified enrichment.

NGOs in International Law: Efficiency in Flexibility?

The expanding function that NGOs play at various degrees of criminal relevance - from treaty-making to rule implementation, and from help to judges to help supply - demands reconsideration of the overseas felony prestige of these agencies. This ebook exhibits that the measure of flexibleness presently loved by means of NGOs in fields as diversified as human rights, the surroundings and the ecu Union improvement cooperation coverage constitutes the simplest area for all actors concerned, with the results that the situations the place extra strict rules of NGOs participation is fascinating are very constrained.

European Competition Law Annual 2000: The Modernisation of EU Competition Law

The eu pageant legislation Annual 2000 is 5th in a sequence of volumes following the yearly Workshops on ecu festival legislation and coverage held on the Robert Schuman Centre of the ecu college in Florence. the current quantity reproduces the fabrics of a roundtable debate that came about on the EUI in June 2000 between senior representatives of ecu associations, popular lecturers and foreign criminal specialists within the box of antitrust at the proposals made by means of the ecu fee for the reform and decentralization of EC antitrust enforcement.

Public Secrets: A Study in the Development of Government Secrecy

W 0000000000000 0000000000 0000000000000

Extra info for Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience

Example text

For a discussion of some of the risks, see Greenawalt, Kent (1987) Conflicts of Law and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 10. For a defence of three stringent conditions for justifiable civil disobedience—that it must be undertaken 1) as a last resort, 2) in defence of justice, and 3) in coordination with other minority groups—see Rawls, John (1971)A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 375. (6) Joseph Raz, for one, says that civil disobedience is sometimes justified and even obligatory, but it is not a general moral right.

See also the judgments cited in Chapter 5 of this book. The risks associated with civil disobedience are: 1) its divisiveness in society; 2) its ability, as a practice usually designed to attract public attention, to lead others to think of breaking the law to achieve whatever changes in policy they espouse (see Raz (1979), 262); and 3) its ability to encourage a general disrespect for the law, particularly when the law is seen as being lenient towards certain kinds of offences. For a discussion of some of the risks, see Greenawalt, Kent (1987) Conflicts of Law and Morality.

Our sensitivity to our special moral responsibilities enables us to settle most contests between competing moral demands (Chapters 2 and 3). It also makes us willing, when necessary, to privilege our special moral responsibilities above formal expectations even when this means breaking laws that originate from normatively valid sources within a reasonably good society (Chapter 3). In defending these claims, I use the following argumentative tools: 1) the gap thesis that, even in a reasonably good society, there is an ineliminable gap between the expectations of normatively valid formal offices and the moral responsibilities that underpin and legitimate those offices; 2) the moral roles thesis that we are morally obligated ceteris paribus to privilege our special moral responsibilities before formal expectations when the two diverge non-trivially; in the Rockwell jury scene, the woman does this if she has a well-founded view of the case that leads her to disregard the judge’s instructions; 3) the minimum moral burdens principle that society must ensure as well as possible that the offices it sets up to address important concerns do not place undue moral burdens upon any would-be occupants of those offices; and 4) the priority of special responsibility principle that, except in extreme moral emergencies, we act in morally acceptable ways when we adhere to our special moral responsibilities instead of doing what we have most reason to do all things considered.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.75 of 5 – based on 27 votes