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On A Moral Right To Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this essay I argue that citizens of a liberal-democratic state, one that I argue has a morally justified claim to political authority, enjoy a moral right to engage in acts of suitably constrained civil disobedience, or what I will call a moral right to public disobedience. Such a claim may well appear inconsistent with the duty usually thought to correlate to a legitimate state’s right to rule, namely, a moral duty to obey the law. If successful, however, the arguments that follow entail that the duty correlative to a liberal-democratic state’s justified claim to political authority is in fact …