Civil Disobedience Action

In this case, however, John Smith has different reasons for his opposition, though the argument he raises is one that was also raised during the Vietnam War when it was more likely that a young black working man would be drafted than a young white college student of the same age. Smith argues that the way the draft is constituted is inherently discriminatory toward the poor. College deferments are given, and he is being discriminated against because he does not have the money to attend college, as is true of much of the poor and especially among African-Americans and other minorities comprising much of the poor population. He makes other arguments as well: that his is a hardship case and that his family needs him to support them, and that America should clean up its own house before making a foray into a foreign country.

Smith has attempted to get help from a number of sources--appeals to the Selective Service Board, to his Representative in Washington, to a congressional committee, to the Congressional Black Caucus. All this has failed. H

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eason why civil disobedience is to be accepted as a method of bringing about change when he talks about the responsibility the individual has to shape the government and the fact that the government must be made into something people can respect. If the people do not respect it, he is saying, they need not obey it and can use disobedience as a way of bringing about the necessary change. Thoreau opposed slavery and war and used civil disobedience to express his beliefs and to prick the conscience of the government. This was his way of being heard. It can be argued that Thoreau used civil disobedience in a good and beneficial way to be heard and to achieve a measure of change. While he says he would prefer if there were no government, it is also clear that he uses civil disobedience to a degree to appeal to the government in order to get the government to behave in a certain way. John Rawls addresses the idea of justice and offers a theory of justice in terms of whether or not it is necessary to obey an unjust law. Rawls speaks of our "obligation" to the law in a way that includes both the notions of a duty and a responsibility and also has a connection with institutional rules. He finds that the obligation to obey the law is
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Approximate Word count = 1766
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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