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Why Is Breaking The Law A Good Thing

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Is breaking the law a good thing? If not then why should civil disobedience be considered a “good thing”. People are arguing that civil disobedience is a good thing but it’s not because it breaks the law and there are reasons why there are laws for people to follow. I believe that civil disobedience is a bad thing because it weakens the power of the government over the people and it makes people think they can do whatever they want.

If in civil disobedience the person doing accepts the punishment, it will encourage people to start breaking laws just make a point when there are various and better ways to make a point. Breaking laws will do nothing for what people want because it will just get the government mad and they will make different laws and make worse punishments for the people, therefore not helping a free society. The act of civil disobedience demonstrates selfishness by a person or group of people. By breaking a law it shows that people will do anything to get what they want even if it doesn’t benefit anyone but themselves. Also for thing a person is fighting for or trying to prove there are opposite views on that idea. So people don’t considerate that what they are fighting for can affect others in a negative way. People naturally care for what’s best for themselves and that’s why we have a democracy, so by using civil disobedience it could potentially harm or democracy. …show more content…

In our government there are set laws to keep society functioning but if people continually break laws to prove a point then It will hurt of government and hurt the “free society” we have now because of how the government will have to take away rights to prevent laws from

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Why do citizens choose to be silent about a law they may find unjust? What are the social and legal consequences for civil disobedience? They are fear of having outcome that could result such as being a prisoner. Social consequences for civil disobedience are pain and stress. Legal Consequences for civil disobedience is jail.

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782 Words | 4 Pages

When disobeying the law in a peaceable manner, the participants lose out on media coverage (due to their lack of sensationalism and interest level to viewers looking for immediacy and sanitization in the coverage of current events) except when called upon by the court of public opinion. In a free society, censorship of topical media bars citizens from a truly transparent government run by and for the people. By speaking out against such bias through action, civil disobedience itself is an act of resistance against censorship, and therefore a proponent of the values of free press and speech. These are keystones in American

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It ensures that one's voice is heard without throwing a temper tantrum or bringing on the destruction of other things or people. And it also ensures that we do not go on silently, always bitterly muttering to ourselves about how we wish things would change, but never gathering up enough courage or motivation to actually change these things. Civil Disobedience is an act of peaceful disagreement, a protest which does no harm to others but which one hopes will bring about a change which one believes is good. Now as far as the impact that civil disobedience has on a free society, I believe that it is a positive one. My reasons being that civil disobedience encourages one to use their rights to voice their opinions in a non-violent way.

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Martin Luther King Jr once stated, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” in his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. He was invoking the principle of civil disobedience. He wasn't justifying breaking laws just because, but instead, meant that you break the law and accept your punishment, in hopes that people will come to see that the law is unethical. Civil disobedience plays an important role in how our society has been shaped up until this point.

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655 Words | 3 Pages

Civil disobedience is when a person or group protests a law that they find morally wrong. The person is usually peaceful and will accept whatever consequences arise due to breaking the law (Suber). People use civil disobedience to draw attention to the laws they find morally wrong and to get the laws changed (Starr). Susan B.Anthony was a women’s rights activist. She was a strong woman who dedicated her whole life to gaining rights for women.

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781 Words | 4 Pages

As Martin Luther King Jr. observes in his "Letters From a Birmingham Jail," it is a sad thing when people condemn the effects of civil disobedience without considering the conditions which festered and led to such a nonviolent protest. As Thoreau writes in his "Civil Disobedience," too much respect for the law can lead people to blindly to terrible things. Consider the Germans who, out of fear of the law, committed the atrocities of the Holocaust; or, the participants of the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, in which men were instructed to continuously 'shock' a hidden person, and which, goaded on by the authority figure, continued even until the subject of the punishment (in actuality an actor) 'died.' Those who choose to take action to take down laws that do not uphold the morals of the people as a whole work instead towards a society based on considered values that respect all of its

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However, it could also be argued that civil disobedience is beneficial to ridding a society of unjust law. If there is law, you have a duty as a citizen to obey the law or you may try to convince those in charge to change them. If using civil disobedience is a method of convincing others to change unjust law, civil disobedience must be unjust. If it is true that being a citizen of a society binds you to obeying the laws, and civil disobedience is an act which breaks the law, then it is not just for

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The civil disobedience is to describe when the public refusal to obey the law or commands of a government that violate one's personal principals without the act of violence, as an effort to induce a change in governmental policy or legislation. The purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power. For example, if a group of people refuses to pay taxes as a peaceful way to express disapproval of those laws they disagree with or taxes. Civil disobedience may be appropriate when a democratically elected government uses its power to discriminate against their race, sex, religion or skin color. In such a situation, people would most liking object the Laws and start a protest to show they want to be treated equally.

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1290 Words | 6 Pages

Herbert J. Storing, an Associate Professor of Political Science, in “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” writes, “One of the practical consequences of this institution [civil disobedience] is to divert disobedience and even revolution into the channel of law” (97). What Storing is saying is that civil disobedience will encourage people to break the laws and they will hide under civil disobedience to avoid the law. Also, civil disobedience might split society by creating disagreements with the people, and it could create a political instability. However, Storing fails to see that those who break an unjust law, as discussed above, do not avoid the law, in fact they show respect to the law as they willingly accept the consequences. By accepting the consequences, they show that they are not acting for their own interests but for society’s.

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1668 Words | 7 Pages

This form of civil disobedience shows the government that they can’t just sign off on things they want without proper consultation from all people involved. As Henry David Thoreau said, “The government is best which governs least.” Thoreau believed that the best way for a country to be governed was by the government intervening as little as possible. Next, civil disobedience is also a non-violent way to show the government what you want changed, and why you want it changed. In a study done by Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in Why Civil Resistance: Works of Nonviolent Conflict, it was discovered “that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26

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801 Words | 4 Pages

Thoreau was strongly against any violent act of protest, but should a person disagree with his/her government, Thoreau would encourage that person to do so in a peaceful manner. Civil disobedience serves the purpose of giving the people a say. For example, Thoreau stated, “Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward attaining it“ (Civil

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290 Words | 2 Pages

I think of law as a system we came up with in order to be able to coexist. We tend to believe that laws are incapable of erring but what happens then when these laws endanger everything you believe in. That’s why I think that sometimes is appropriate to disobey them. Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government as a result of moral objections, especially through passive resistance. One case in which civil disobedience would be justified is when people are discriminated against.

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1251 Words | 6 Pages

Civil disobedience is nonviolent resistance to a government’s law in seek of change. Civil disobedience is an effective way to bring about change because it is a harmless way of fighting an unjust law or idea, it can educate people about the cause, and it has been successful many times in history. First and foremost, civil disobedience is

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1360 Words | 6 Pages

Civil Disobedience is known as breaking the law because you don 't agree with a certain law or have a peaceful protest about that law or what you believe in. An example would be when Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to the Indian ocean as the citizens gathered more and more to fight for there Indian Independence. This occasion was called the Salt March. The reason for The Salt March was a March were all the citizens from India walked with gandhi to fight back for their Independence from the British, since it was taken away from the British.

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What I will explain to you in this article will, how we are connected with the law and I hope, make you see sense in the importance of our laws in the society we live in. To be against the importance of laws in our society would show one to be ignorant and naïve. I encounter the law on a daily basis when I am driving. I have to follow the speed limit of each road, I have to signal before changing lanes, my vehicle must be in good condition in order to safely drive and I must obey all road signs as they are set in place to ensure the safety of everybody.

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