break at night. A fair compromise would be to alternate duties. An unfair
compromise would be for the wife to do weekday nights, and the husband
weekends.
The point about a fair compromise is that a person can still feel that the decision- to split the money, or to alternate baby duties – is unfair in an absolute sense,
but that under the circumstances it is fair. As Singer argues with regard to the
Dissenter: ‘to disobey when there already is a fair compromise in operation is
necessarily to deprive others of the say they have under such a compromise. To do
this is to leave the others with no remedy but the use of force’ (Singer, 1973: 36).
Singer argues that while we cannot consent – either explicitly or tacitly – to the
procedure itself, we can consent by our actions to the decisions made under it.
Singer borrows a concept from law to express the moral bindingness of participation:
estoppel. He quotes an English judge – Lord Birkenhead:
Where A has by his words or conduct justified B in believing that a certain state
of affairs exists, and B has acted upon such belief to his prejudice, A is not
permitted to affirm against B that a different state of facts existed at the same
time.
(Singer, 1973: 51)
An everyday, non-legal example would be the British convention of buying a
round of drinks in a pub (bar): if four people go to the pub and the first person
buys four pints of beer, and then the second person does so, and then the third
person likewise, the fourth, who has accepted three pints, can reasonably be expected
to buy a round. He has not consented to the rule or convention of buying a round,
but his acceptance of the three pints has affected the behaviour of his three friends.
Singer anticipates the objection that the Dissenter can avoid being bound through
estoppel simply by not participating in the democratic process. He argues that the
notion of a fair compromise generates not only an obligation to accept the decision
of the majority, but also to participate in the process: it is not reasonable to sit it
out. If you sit it out and then find the decision made is unacceptable you cannot
have grounds for refusing to accept the decision, because you were unreasonable
in prejudging the decision. People who do not vote can have no complaint against
the decisions made by those who do.
Problems with democracy
Singer’s defence of obedience to a democratically agreed law is an ‘all things being
equal’ defence. He does not argue that we should alwaysobey such law. Although
he does not discuss situations in which civil disobedience is justified, some of the
more obvious examples are dealt with below:
(a) In a representative democracy – Singer’s example was of a direct one – the
elected representatives will not necessarily mirror the social, ethnic and gender
composition of the electorate. The fact that elected assemblies often do not
mirror their electorates is not in itself a justification for disobedience. However,
if it can be shown that a particular group – for example working-class women428 Part 4 Contemporary ideas