In five pages this paper examines the philosophical views of Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls as they pertain to civil disobedience. Four sources are cited in the bibliography.
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of the greatest and most influential occurrences of civil disobedience began in its written form, "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another..." Thomas Jefferson wrote those words in an effort to prepare the hearers of their reading for the consequences that would
follow. The colonies had petitioned the British government. They had visited, they had protested, they had appealed to the crowns sense of humanity. Conditions continued to worsen,
however, until American sensibilities could no longer deal with conditions as they were. It was time to change those conditions, and all other avenues had been exhausted. The
Revolutionary War was on, and the United States of America was born. Philosophical Base And what of the need of a lawful people
to obey the law? The colonists were law-abiding and hard working. Yet they committed the grandest act of civil disobedience that the British government could hope to experience.
Philosophically, the decision was sound. In his Republic, Plato wrote that government exists because the governed support its existence and extend their
permission. Abraham Lincoln promoted the Platonic view in his Gettysburg Address in saying that the government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people."
The philosophies of Kant, Mill and Rawls are particularly applicable to consideration of civil disobedience. Kants bottom-line position is that individuals should act from
the "categorical imperative." That is to say that they should decide on what action to take as though they could, through their will, cause their actions to become universal