Episode 20: On Civil Disobedience

In the last episode on Human Rights, I left open the question of whether Civil Disobedience should count as a fundamental human right. A good example of this debate occurs in the film The Great Debaters (2007). After having defined civil disobedience (following the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas), I argue that it should count as a fundamental human right - under specified conditions: it should be a non-violent, public and political act, undertaken by a group in society whose fundamental human rights are under threat. I discuss the role of civil disobedience in both democratic systems, in which it can play an active part, and in totalitarian regimes, in which it mainly plays a passive part. Civil disobedience can be seen as the right for fight for one's rights. Literature: - M. Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (1970) - J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971: Ch. VI) - J. Habermas, 'Civil Disobedience', in: Berkeley Journal of Sociology 30 (1985): 95-116 (translated form the German original in: Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit, 1985: 79-99)