Is civil disobedience ever justified?

Extraits de l'exposé

[...] Acceptance of majority decisions is a fair way of resolving conflicts and if a citizen declines to abide by majority decisions, he is abrogating to himself the decision- making process and seeking to impose his own view on others. The answer of a disobeyer would be that not everyone does actually have an equal chance of influencing decisions, an equal say, and an equal voice in the process. It is true. It is one of the main problems of concrete democracies of the real world but in this case, the problem must be resolved by improving the democracy and seeking to reconcile theory and practice. [...]

[...] Since obeying the laws of a political system is a way to support it, faith in democracy implies obedience to its laws. To discuss reasons for obedience in a democratic framework is part of a wider debate on the many reasons to prefer democracy to other political systems. Bibliography H.A Bedau ?Introduction?, John Morreall ?chapter The justifiability of violent civil disobedience?, Kent Greenawalt ?chapter 11: Justifying non-violent disobedience? in Civil Disobedience in focus (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 1-12, 130-143 and 170-188. [...]

[...] Along with the term, ?civil disobedience?. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, (Harmondsworth : The Penguin American Library originally published in 1849). This essay is about the refusal of his author to pay his poll tax to protest against the federal government's aggressive war against Mexico. Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is within you, (London: Oxford University Press for the Tolstoy Society originally published in 1894). Tolstoy defended the right to refuse to bear arms. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance, (New York: Schocken, 1961). [...]

[...] Is civil disobedience ever justified? is bound to obey secular princes in so far as this is required by order of justice. Wherefore if the prince's authority is not just but usurped, or if he commands what is unjust, his subjects are not bound to obey him, except perhaps accidentally, in order to avoid scandal or danger.?[1] Civil disobedience can be defined and that will be the definition I will consider in this essay a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government?[2]. [...]

[...] supra), I will not deal with the question of violence, assuming that civil disobedience is non-violent. In this essay, I shall argue that if a democracy runs smoothly, there is no valuable reason for disobeying the law. This essay has been divided into two parts. In the first one, after having defining the notion of democracy, I will show that in a democratic regime there is a moral obligation to abide by the law. In the second, I will prove that it is in our own best interest to obey the law in a democracy, since disobedience risks producing a greater evil than the one we confront. [...]