3.Rawls’s conditions If civil disobedience can be intended to disable the state from
carrying out its policies then some of Rawls’s conditions on civilly disobedient
acts become redundant. It is no longer essential – although it may be desirable- that an action be public. Certainly, publicity may be important in achieving
one’s objective and covert action may blur the distinction between civil dis -
obedience and mere criminality. Likewise, the willingness to bear the punish ment
is desirable – for the same reasons – but, again, would not be essential, and
Rawls’s distinction between civil disobedience and conscientious refusal breaks
down. Rawls is right to argue that at some point it must be possible to recognise
the injustice of a law, where ‘justice’ denotes a specifically political conception,
but a person engaged in civil disobedience need not be motivated by a sense of
justice distinct from a non-political but moral motivation.
Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement
The aim of this final section is to apply the theoretical discussion of the previous
section to a case study of civil disobedience: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights
Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. There are several reasons
why we have chosen this: (a) it is the most famous example of civil disobedience
and the one that influenced Rawls (A Theory of Justice, published in 1972, was
written during the period of the Civil Rights Movement); (b) it is now several decades
since the main objectives of the movement were achieved, so we can assess its impact- from a Rawlsian perspective this is important, because if civil disobedience is an
appeal to the majority to remove injustice and so strengthen the political system,
then we need to see whether this was a result of the movement.
Historical background to the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement has its roots in the struggle for emancipation from
slavery in the nineteenth century. There were sporadic slave revolts before 1860,
but it was during the civil war of 1861–5 that the struggle for emancipation become
a central focus of American life. During the civil war, the Northern and Western
states of America had remained within the Union, while the 11 Southern states
formed the Confederacy (the 11 were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia).
After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1862),
slavery became the main issue dividing ‘North’ (Union) and ‘South’ (Confederacy),
but it is important to stress the constitutional struggle behind the issue of slavery,
because this underlay the political debate in the 1950s and 1960s.
The 10th Amendment (the 10th article of the Bill of Rights) guarantees states’
rights: ‘the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people’.
The ‘states’ rights’ argument tended to be used by whichever bloc was in the
minority: in the earlier nineteenth century the (minority) anti-slave states of New
England asserted states’ rights to prohibit the holding of slaves against the majorityChapter 19 Civil disobedience 435