El artículo revisa -tomando como referencia el episodio de un bloqueo de vías en Argentina durante siete días con sus noches, por parte de los habitantes de las localidades de Cutralco y Plaza Huincul, Argentina, con motivo de la privatización de YPF- el debate sobre la desobediencia civil, que es usualmente entendida como una desobediencia por la fuerza al orden constitucional. El autor desarrolla los componentes que la desobediencia civil tiene de específico, a saber: es disruptiva, pacífica, autónoma (...) y recursiva; esto último porque debe vincularse internamente con el mismo tipo de reglas que le reclama al sistema. Ello, dice, la convierte en una práctica excepcional, pero ello no implica que se incurra en una idealización. Plantea luego que, en lugar de encapsular a la desobediencia civil dentro de los moldes del liberalismo, buscando el menor costo posible para el Estado de derecho, y convertirla en inofensiva para que sea legítima, habría que redefinirla a partir de los ideales procedimentales que presuponemos en cualquier práctica social. (shrink)

Um Estado democrático de Direito fundamenta suas bases em princípios de justiça universalizáveis. Aplicados a uma Constituição, objetivam-se nos direitos e liberdades fundamentais dos cidadãos. O dever de obedecer a leis injustas, a desobediência civil e a objeção de consciência pressupõem senso de justiça e uma concepção do bem, capacidades morais de uma “pessoa ética”. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Direitos fundamentais. Justiça. Constituição. Desobediência civil. ABSTRACT A democratic State of law puts its bases on principles of justice capable of universal (...) validity. Applied to a constitution, such principles are objectivied in the fundamental rights and liberties of the citizens. The duty of obeying unjust laws, civil disobedience and consciousness objection presuppose a sense of justice and a conception of the good, that is, moral capacities of an “ethical person”. KEY WORDS – Fundamental rights. Justice. Constitution. Civil desobedience. (shrink)

The point of departure for htis essay is the evaluation of democracy in Latin America, in particular, Colombian democracy following the new, 1991 Constitution. Special emphasis is placed upon the phenomena of violence, corruption and abstentionism, while a solution for these problems is sought in the strengthening of democracy in the specific form of participatory democracy, understood as a more authentic version capable of incorporating diverse cultures, classes and social movements. Recent discussions in contemporary moral and political philosophy help to (...) clarify the meaning of participatory democracy through a reconstruction of the debate between J. Habermas' discourse ethics and radical democracy, and J. Rawls' political liberalism, which has in turn been challenged by the liberal and communitarian critiques of R. Dworkin and M. Sandel, respectively. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Dans cet ouvrage de référence consacré à une analyse approfondie du thème du consentement aux soins dans la pratique médicale, M.-F. Civil porte son regard de médecin et de philosophe sur les comportements de bon nombre de praticiens à l'heure actuelle plus ou moins soumis à la « mathématisation » de la médecine. Loin de se contenter d'un état des lieux complet de la question, il nous conduit pas à pas sur les chemins (...) d'une « éthique existentielle » tout à fait singulière, renvoyant à des situations pratiques de soins où délibérer avant d'agir et réfléchir à l'action déjà prise permet aux patients d'exprimer le sens donné à leur vécu dans le cadre de leur projet de vie immédiate ou future. Son approche très phénoménologique, aux côtés notamment de Heidegger et Husserl, ouvre la porte à un vaste chantier de réflexion pour tous ceux qui envisagent de se pencher sur la manière concrète d'être-au-monde en médecine comme souci pour soi et pour les autres. Ainsi ce livre interpelle les étudiants, les chercheurs, les professionnels de santé, mais également tous ceux qui ont été, ou seront, tôt ou tard, confrontés au problème du consentement.". (shrink)

Writing in 1978, on the eve of Thatcherism’s political triumph, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (Hall et al., 2013, p. 193) claimed Britain was experiencing a ‘crisis of hegemony’; a political, e...

In this book Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality.

El positivismo y la problemática iusfilosófica contemporánea de la obediencia al derecho - La problemática del pensamiento sociológico y la consolidación del paradigma autopoiético - La radicación del positivismo en el paradigma autopoiético del derecho y la política - La crítica al positivismo del paradigma consensual discursivo del derecho y la política - El paradigma consensual-discursivo y la problemática contemporánea de la desobediencia civil - Tribunal constitucional y desobediencia civil en el marco del paradigma consensual-discursivo.

I define ecosabotage and relate this definition to several well-known analyses of civil disobedience. I show that ecosabotage cannot be reduced to a form of civil disobedience unless the definition of civil disobedience is expanded. I suggest that ecosabotage and civil disobedience are special cases of the more general concept of conscientious wrongdoing. Although ecosabotage cannot be considered a form of civil disobedience on the basis of the standard analysis of this concept, the civil (...) disobedience literature can provide important insights into the justification of ecosabotage. First, traditional appeals to a higher law in justifying ecosabotage are no more successful than they are in justifying civil disobedience. Second, utilitarian justifications of ecosabotage are promising. At present there is no apriori reason tosuppose that some acts of ecosabotage could not be justified on utilitarian grounds, although such ecosaboteurs as Dave Foreman have not provided a full justification of its use in concrete cases. (shrink)

Se realizó una investigación con el objetivo de elaborar actividades que relacionan los elementos teóricos con la práctica desde la asignatura Defensa Civil, para contribuir a la participación de estudiantes universitarios y habitantes de la comunidad "Los Coquitos" en la prevención, mitigación o solución de los problemas ambientales que la afectan. Se aplicó un pre-experimento que permitió comprobar la efectividad de las actividades desarrolladas. Esta propuesta favoreció la vinculación de la escuela con la comunidad desde la protección del medio (...) ambiente. A research was carried out with the aim of designing tasks that relate theoretical elements with the practice in Civil Defense to contribute to the participation of university students and inhabitants of Los Coquitos community in the prevention, lessening or solution of the environmental problems it faces. A pre-experiment was applied which allowed to test the effectiveness of these tasks. This proposal favored the relation between the school and the community taking into account the environmental protection. (shrink)

Tony Milligan argues that some forms of covert non-human animal rescue, wherein activists anonymously and illegally free non-human animals from confinement, should be understood as acts of civil disobedience. However, most traditional understandings of civil disobedience require that the civil disobedient act publicly rather than covertly. Thus Milligan’s proposal is that we revise our understanding of civil disobedience to allow for covert in addition to public disobedience. I argue we should not. Milligan cannot justify using paradigm (...) cases to expand the scope of civil disobedience without justifying similar reasons to limit the scope, and he does nto give convincing reasons for discarding the communication requirement, according to which an action cannot count as civil disobedience unless it is communicative. The immediate conclusion is that animal rescue is not civil disobedience, while the broader conclusion is one about civil disobedience more broadly: an act must be public to count as civil disobedience. (shrink)

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- A composite definition -- Agreeing to differ -- Sympathy and deception -- How best to rule -- Entry and exit -- Intelligence in states -- Enemies -- Down with authenticity -- The disenchantment of the intellectuals -- The problem with communism -- The destruction of trust -- Imperialism, the perversion of nationalism -- Conclusion -- Index.

The aim of the paper is to clarify what is properly common to the common good and to support its irreducibility as a guarantee of overcoming an atomistic conception of civil society. We begin by addressing the notion of individual freedom and the questioning of the selfish condition of the human being. Then, we delve into the normative possibilities offered by an ethical interpretation of the common good. The difference of the common good from other notions used in late-modern (...) discourses is key in determining the intrinsic commonality of social relations. In concluding, we argue for a conception of the common good that accommodates individual freedom, understanding it no longer in isolation, but as part of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This article discusses the process of empirical research on access to justice, explaining the procedure from data collection to analysis. Research into access to justice finds ways to render civil justice to citizens equitably. Reliable, non-anecdotal data is a prerequisite for useful empirical research into access to justice. Three international initiatives illustrate the reflection of access to justice in research projects. They are, the World Bank's Justice for the Poor Program, UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and (...) the Tilburg Microjustice Initiative. The most comprehensive empirical projects on access to justice are those sponsored at the national or sub-national level. Non-governmental drivers of broad-based data collection are other legal actors. This article discusses examples of data collection and evaluation in countries where research has generated data on civil justice. Finally, this article discusses barriers to access to justice, which cause exclusion. (shrink)

This paper employs the critical and analytical techniques of philosophical reflection to present a moral justification for the use of non-violent civil disobedience by Kenyan citizens in pursuit of their aspirations. It sets out with a brief review of political disobedience in Kenya from the advent of the British invasion and domination of the country in the late nineteenth century to the present. Next, it examines the nature of non-violent civil disobedience, outlining the views of four of its (...) most influential advocates, namely, Étienne de La Boétie, Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It then offers a moral justification for non-violent civil disobedience by presenting nine arguments in its favour, with special reference to the Kenyan context. Thereafter, it answers six objections to non-violent civil disobedience. The paper concludes that it is high time that Kenyans gave serious consideration to a commitment to non-violent civil disobedience. (shrink)

This article attempts to answer why some countries experience the recurrence of civil war and others do not. One of the most significant differences between civil war onset and its recurrence is that the latter has once experienced termination of civil war, while the former has not. To find the cause of recurrence, this article examines how different war termination types influence the duration of post-civil war peace. Duration analysis of the civil wars between 1944 (...) and 1999 shows that military victory, supported by peacekeeping operations or power-sharing arrangements, leads to the most durable peace in a post-civil war country. Contrary to the accepted wisdom, negotiated peace settlement, even when supported by peacekeeping operations or power-sharing arrangements, is not positively related to post-conflict peace. (shrink)

This book looks at the civil justice system - the courts and what they do; legal aid and other methods of providing access to justice; lawyers and their conduct; and the role of legal procedure. It also looks at the impact the civil justice system has on wider society, and its relationship with economics and commercial development. The book is largely focussed on Britain, but includes material from the USA, the Indian sub-continent, south-east Asia, and Aboriginal society in (...) Australia. (shrink)

Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical (...) self-consciousness of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike. (shrink)

This work introduces and defends a radically different type of liberal political theory by severing liberal thought from all underlying moral foundations. Its aim is to present a type of liberalism capable of accommodating the richly diverse differences of worldview and moral theory of the good present in today's pluralist societies. By constructing liberalism as a purely political doctrine, the author develops a theory of toleration, and civil association more generally, capable of meeting liberalism's historic commitment to diversity. While (...) the justification for such a liberalism must be made in prudential terms, rather than the more familiar moral terms used to support competing liberal theories, the liberalism developed here remains faithful to the liberal tradition by defending a theory of equal liberty as the primary political virtue of a just society. (shrink)

In this thought-provoking book, Eli Foster Ritter explores the relationship between moral and civil law, arguing that they are different aspects of the same fundamental system of justice. With insightful analysis and persuasive argumentation, Ritter challenges readers to reconsider their assumptions about the nature of law and the role it plays in society. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is (...) in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Drug-trafficking in Colombia has been a widely researched phenomenon, especially now, as the country undergoes a transition process with its older guerrilla. Now more than ever it is fundamental to examine how drug-trafficking organizations violent activities affect the consolidation of peace. This article considers different approaches to study violence derived from drug-trafficking, in order to advance towards the objectives of transitional justice. For that matter, this work is based on the idea that drug-trafficking directly generates and reproduces violence which is (...) fueled by the structural violence present in the Colombian context. My thesis is that this phenomenon deters non-repetition guarantees and weakens democracy, which is why there will be three main arguments presented that will revolve around the lack of consensus and the implications of considering drug wars as civil wars, how decisions related to the conceptual apprehension limit the competence of international humanitarian law, and the need for holistic strategies capable of facing drug-trafficking’s political and violent power. Later, alternatives will be explored around the possibilities that each argument offers, as well as which aspects could contribute to a more appropriate approach to combat drug-trafficking. Lastly, I will defend why implementing bottom-up oriented actions can advance towards transitional justice’s intermediate and final objectives, as it is the only alternative that escapes fatalist, utopian or interventionist scenarios. (shrink)

This study investigated how the social identities assumed by individuals as part of their professional roles influence the nature and use of a range of rationalizations for their corruption or the corrupt acts of others. Thirty senior Indonesian public servants were interviewed about the causes and factors that perpetuated corruption during the Suharto era, and how they rationalized corrupt behavior within the role of being a civil servant. Findings revealed that corruption was routine and embedded in the daily activities (...) and administrative structures of Indonesian public servants. Rationalizing ideologies that supported corruption included a denial of responsibility, social weighting and an appeal to higher loyalties. Central to these rationalizations were explanations around the low levels of civil service salaries, poor accountability, and corrupt leadership at senior levels of the government. However, the expression of these rationalizations varied across three social or role identities of the Indonesian civil servant: the professional civil servant, the collegial civil servant, and the corrupt civil servant. The implications of these findings for interventions in organizations in developing countries are discussed. (shrink)

In his 1963 response to an open letter from eight white religious leaders chastising his involvement in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that civil rights activists’ blatant breaking of some laws while obeying others was the result of two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. Civil rights activists believed they had a legal responsibility to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Today, new civil rights struggles continue to challenge unjust (...) laws that shred the fabric of democracy that America espouses. Drawing upon both the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, this article argues that unjust laws and practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established. It identifies four ethical strategies for social activism: collective work and responsibility, strategic timing and economic disconnection, political mobilization, and faithful perseverance. (shrink)

In most discussions of civil disobedience, certain characteristics are offered as essential to an act of justifiable civil disobedience, or sometimes to any act of civil disobedience. Among these one of the most frequently mentioned is nonviolence. Some thinkers, like Bedau and Wasserstrom, require an act to be nonviolent before they will even count it as an act of civil disobedience; the very concept for them includes the notion of nonviolence. Others, like Stuart Brown, Rex Martin (...) and Michael Bayles, admit the possibility of a violent act of civil disobedience; but hold that, though nonviolent civil disobedience is justifiable, violent civil disobedience is not justifiable. (shrink)

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.

In accordance with environmental injustice, sometimes called environmental racism, minority communities are disproportionately subjected to a higher level of environmental risk than other segments of society. Growing concern over unequal environmental risk and mounting evidence of both racial and economic injustices have led to a grass-roots civil rights campaign called the environmental justice movement. The environmental ethics aspects of environmental injustice challenge narrow utilitarian views and promote Kantian rights and obligations. Nevertheless, an environmentaljustice value exists in all ethical world (...) views, although it involves a concept of equitable distribution of environmental protection that has been lacking in environmental ethics discussion. (shrink)

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet (...) ultimately different, modes of political illegality. The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of... (shrink)

The article is about the freedom in Rousseau splitting of two basic ideas. The first is that the freedom existed markedly in the natural man and the second is this man came to lose it along his history, when by far historical processes constituted in society. The text proposes a discussion – from the reading of two works of Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men and The Social Contract – of the possibility of a return (...) to freedom in civil society, where perceives the opportunity of this rescue. For Rousseau, the man in the state of nature lived happy and in peace, whereas in the state of society there is a predominance of the inequality between the men: the moral inequality. The social pact is guarantee of the life in society and of the convergence of interests of his members. A pact by the freedom of the individual and by the democratic society. (shrink)