Sunzidha Khatun Mukti

This thesis explores the conditions under which civil disobedience is right in a democratic society when citizens are obligated to abide by law, and also have a moral obligation to defy injustice. The starting point of the thesis is John Rawls' theory of civil disobedience. According to Rawls, civil disobedience is defined as: breaking a law in a public, nonviolent, conscientious and political manner, directed towards the consciousness of justice of the majority. He is telling a valuable story because he demonstrates that illegal protest can be a form of loyalty to the democratic law, not a rejection of it. But the thesis argues that Rawls' theory is not a complete explanation of political resistance. Rawls's writing is primarily about a nearly just constitutional democracy, but in real democracies there is the possibility of a gross injustice, exclusionary or unresponsive democracies. The thesis is used to develop this argument and mainly refers to the works on civil disobedience of Sen, Arendt, Dworkin, and Lefkowitz. The focus of Sen's work is on actual and remedial injustice, of Arendt's on collective political action, of Dworkin's on the way in which rights restrict the power of the majority, and of Lefkowitz's on civil disobedience as participation in democracy. The issue of uncivil disobedience is then studied in the context of Lai and Scheuerman. Lai demonstrates that civility is not an exhaustive measure of morality, and Scheuerman cautions that if not circumscribed enough, uncivil resistance may prove politically perilous. The thesis argues for Rawlsian perspective that takes context into account context. Rawlsian civil disobedience should be the expected democratic form of action, but there is a range of permissible deviations from civility under certain conditions which make civil disobedience necessary and proportionate, publicly justifiable, and respectful of democratic cooperation, and in which the injustice is serious and ordinary methods are inadequate. Civil disobedience is therefore primarily understood as a morally serious, resistance to law waged when justice is denied, which can serve to protect democracy when law fails justice.