Law Commons^™

In Defense Of Penalizing (But Not Punishing) Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

While many contemporary political philosophers agree that citizens of a legitimate state enjoy a moral right to civil disobedience, they differ over both the grounds of that right and its content. This essay defends the view that the moral right to civil disobedience derives from (or is a facet of) a general right to political participation, and the characterization of that right as precluding the state from punishing, but not from penalizing, those who exercise it. The argument proceeds by way of rebuttals to criticisms of both claims recently advanced by Kimberley Brownlee. While in some cases those criticisms fail …