Disobedience to bad laws can sometimes trigger democratic processes. What further strengthens the hope for democracy – the behaviour of Birmingham`s blacks, who broke local regulations when they staged their protest marches, or the behaviour of the police, who used dogs and fire hoses to assert their legal authority? Civil disobedience is not easy like other acts in which men courageously defend their principles. This is a violation of the law. And the law cannot make provision for its violation, except to make the offender punishable. That is why President Kennedy found himself in such an awkward position last spring at the time of the black protests in Birmingham. He gave many signs that he sympathized as an individual with the goals of the protesters. As a political leader, he probably realized that these goals could not be achieved without spectacular actions that crossed the line of illegality. But as general manager, he could not approve or authorize such actions. In short, civil disobedience is a serious undertaking. It can sometimes be justified, but the provocation must be just as serious. These must be basic principles.
The evils that are fought must be serious evils that are likely to persist if they are not combated. There should be reasonable grounds to believe that the lawful methods used to combat them alone are likely to be inadequate. Economic rights (such as the right of reproduction and public performance), which are generally better understood than moral rights, give authors control over their copyrighted works and a means of obtaining compensation for the exploitation of their works. The fundamental fallacy in the thesis that civil disobedience can never be justified in a democracy is that it confuses the ideals or goals of democracy with the inevitably less than perfect achievements of democracy at any given time. In accordance with democratic ideals, the laws of a democracy can confer on individuals rights and powers that theoretically enable them to work legally for the elimination of injustices. An observer may approve the reasons that led to some of these actions and reject others. However, they all raise the same fundamental question: Does the individual have the right – or perhaps the duty – to disobey the law when his mind, conscience or religious beliefs tell him that the law is unjust? Copyright owners have the right to control derivative works or the creation of “derivative works”. This right is protected by copyright. See 17 U.S.C.
Section 106 Section 14.1 of Canada`s Copyright Act protects moral rights. [14] Moral rights cannot be assigned but revoked by contract. Many publishing contracts in Canada now include a standard waiver of moral rights. BUT who should make these tough decisions? Who can say that one man`s moral principles are just and another`s are wrong? Here we come to the special function that civil disobedience fulfills in a society. The man who breaks the law on the grounds that the law is immoral asks the rest of us to trust him or those he trusts against the established conventions and authorities of our society. Morality is a set of principles that attempt to define what is good and bad behavior. Moral principles can be based on culture, religion, experience and personal values. An action is considered moral if it meets these standards, even if everyone has different standards.
Imagine taking a walk in your city one evening. You arrive at an intersection with a traffic light. The pedestrian light says stop, but the whole street is empty. You wait and wait before finally deciding to cross the road. There are no cars coming, and you keep walking. Technically, what you did was illegal. But if you asked the average person if what you did was immoral, they would probably say no. Rights therefore play a central role in ethics. Respect for rights ensures that the freedom and well-being of each individual is protected when others threaten that freedom or well-being. If an individual has a moral right, then it is morally reprehensible to interfere with that right, even if a large number of people would benefit from such interference.
But what`s more alarming than a politician bending the rules is the ease with which his supporters often invoke, “Well, it`s not illegal.” Let`s go back to the schoolyard for some helpful reminders of our social norms. We are alarmed by bullying, and not only do we tell children not to bully, but we also reprimand children who turn a blind eye to bullying. We tell our children to raise their voices, stand up for the weak, etc. Similarly, whistleblowing is promoted by many national organizations, universities and even the federal government. Moral rights are justified by moral standards that most people recognize, but which are not codified by law and have therefore been interpreted differently by different people. Moral rights have traditionally not been recognized in U.S. law. [17] Some elements of moral rights exist in the United States, but are generally protected by specific contractual provisions between the parties, or by the laws of individual states or derivative works rights in U.S. copyright law. [17] U.S. copyright law emphasizes the protection of financial rewards rather than the protection of creative attribution. [5]:xiii The tradition of exclusive rights in the United States is incompatible with the concept of moral rights as constituted in the Civil Code tradition of post-revolutionary France.
When the United States acceded to the Berne Convention, it stipulated that the “moral rights” provisions of the Convention were sufficiently reflected in other laws, such as defamation and defamation laws. [5]:30 This is one of the standard and often sincere arguments against the activities of people like racial equality advocates in Congress who alter laws they deem offensive by dramatically breaking them. These groups are often convicted of risking unrest and flouting the law, when they could achieve their goals in a much more just and patriotic manner if they respected the law and limited themselves to courts and methods of peaceful persuasion. What will they do? Do you stand there, obey the traffic light law, or jump across the street to save the child? Ignoring the traffic light would be illegal, but saving the child would clearly be morally right, right? So here we have an example of an illegal but morally just act. These rights are separate from all copyright and ownership rights in a copy of the work. [21] So we can see that legal rightness and moral rightness are two completely different things. There are actions that are legally just but morally reprehensible; There are actions that are morally just but illegal; And then there are also more or less broad areas of regulation in which legal and moral coincide. It is therefore not correct to say that, for example, abortion is morally reprehensible because it violates the law. This is a bad argument, because the law itself could be an immoral law in this case.
One might think, of course, that abortion is morally wrong (or just), but this must be justified by an argument based on ethical theories, not just the laws of a particular place. Nor is the only restriction on the moral right of the individual to disobey the law. The most important caveat is that his cause must be just. It is true that General de Gaulle disobeyed Marshal Pétain; it is not true that the commanders of the French army in Algeria disobeyed General de Gaulle 20 years later. We certainly expect people to act morally and ethically, even when there is no law or legal enforcement to draw the consequences. In particular, we hope that politicians will go beyond legal norms and make ethical choices, as they are elected leaders who are expected to promote the best interests of all citizens. In 1978, American Cyanamid, a West Virginia-based paint company, announced that women who could have children could no longer work in corporate jobs that could expose them to lead and other chemicals potentially harmful to fetal life in order to “protect the unborn children of working employees from potential harm.” A year later, four women interviewed by a newspaper said they needed to be sterilized to keep their well-paying jobs at American Cyanamide. While the company claimed it was trying to protect the rights of the unborn, the women said the company forced them to sacrifice their own reproductive rights.
Supporters of the company agreed that an employer has the right to set the working conditions of its employees, while women`s advocates have argued that workers have the right to be protected from workplace hazards without having to choose between sterilization and job loss. Kant`s principle is also often used to justify positive or social rights. Many people argue that a fundamental right to liberty is worthless if people are unable to exercise that freedom. A right to liberty therefore implies that every human being also has a fundamental right to what is necessary to ensure a minimum level of prosperity. Positive rights are therefore rights that provide something that people need to ensure their well-being, such as the right to education, the right to food, the right to medical care, the right to housing or the right to work. Positive rights impose on us a positive duty – the duty to actively help a person to have or do something. A young person`s right to education, for example, imposes on us the duty to provide him with an education. Respect for a positive right therefore requires more than inaction; Positive rights impose on us the duty to contribute to the well-being of those in need of help.