33 Here, in fuller elaboration, is the logic informing the Declarations dictates of prudence with respect to actions leading up to and including revolutionary uprising. This was my first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance., A still more powerful influence was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, whose teaching King discovered as a seminary student a few years thereafter. In Defense of Uncivil Disobedience | A Duty to Resist: When Mindful of the same socioeconomic conditions that alarmed King, Bayard Rustin (Kings longtime adviser and perhaps the movements shrewdest tactician and organizer) called for activism within the regular democratic processes of petition, electoral persuasion, and voting; he endorsed a strategic turn toward political action and a temporary curtailment of mass demonstrations.[REF] By failing to heed Rustins advice, King departed from his previously stated principles regarding civil disobedience. To say that less radical measures are to be preferred to more radical measures is to say that actions outside established legal and political channels are to be taken only, From his adolescence to the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., found inspiration in the promise inherent in the Declaration of Independence, although he was acutely aware that for black Americans, that promise had gone unfulfilled. Civil disobedience is justified when it is used to protest democratic majorities overstepping their authority by violating fundamental rights. Those victories included: So far as it was taken not as a last resort but, to the contrary, amid a period of accumulating successes for the equal-rights cause achieved by scrupulously lawful means, Kings decision to practice civil disobedience in Birmingham appears precipitant, unwarranted by his own criterion of justification. Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart. One cannot say that Kings explanation of the distinction between just and unjust laws suffices in itself to ward off the charges of anarchism leveled by critics. " Democracy. In the Letter, King contended that as applied to his direct-action campaign, the ordinance that the injunction was issued to enforce was a violation of the U.S. Constitution, in particular of the First Amendments guarantee of rights of peaceful assembly and protest. To convey the proper respect for law, one must obey as much of the law as possible. To What Extent is Civil Disobedience Justified in a Democracy . Introduction. Civil Disobedience- an act against a certain law with no violence One thing that comes with civil disobedience is change. Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: TEN-HERNG LAI, CHONG-MING LIM Environmental Activism and the Fairness of Costs Argument for Uncivil Disobedience, Journal of the American Philosophical Association 19 (Jan 2023): 1-20. [REF] Nonetheless, it is significant that King stipulated, as a requisite of civil disobedience, that the practitioner must possess a distinctive set of religiously grounded moral qualities, including a firm commitment to a higher, natural and divine law and a faith that suffering in the service of that law can be redemptive for oneself and others. Civil disobedience is not used to create chaos. Again, the justification of civil disobedience in this kind of case depends on the particulars. Civil disobedience is an important morally justified protest Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Courts decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools [o]ne may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?[REF], The objection was familiar to King.