Abstract
In this paper, I defend the existence of a moral duty to disobey the law and engage in civil disobedience on the basis of one of the grounds of political obligation—the Samaritan duty. Christopher H. Wellman has recently offered a ‘Samaritan account’ of state legitimacy and political obligation, according to which the state is justified in coercing each citizen in order to rescue all from the perilous circumstances of the state of nature; and each of us is bound to obey the law, as the state demands, because we each have a responsibility to help rescue others when this assistance is not unreasonably costly. Though Wellman recognizes that there can be reasons for disobeying the law and resisting injustice in otherwise legitimate states, he overlooks the possibility that at least some of these reasons could be Samaritan in nature, grounded in the duty to rescue people from peril. As I shall argue, the Samaritan duty supports obligations to disobey the law, when the law prohibits Samaritan rescues, and to engage in civil disobedience, when unjust laws and practices contribute to endangering people. The discussion proceeds as follows. After a brief overview of the Samaritan duty, I articulate my case for Samaritan duties to disobey the law, and duties to engage in civil disobedience when unjust laws, institutions, or practices enable what I call ‘persistent Samaritan perils’. I then examine and respond to several objections to my account: first, that the costs of law-breaking are unreasonable, and thus cannot be morally required; second, that individuals’ particular acts of protest and civil disobedience do not appear to make any difference to the rescue, and thus cannot be required; third, that I stretch the Samaritan duty beyond recognition; and fourth, that the Samaritan duty binds us to help people in need or peril anywhere, not particularly at home. I consider in conclusion the advantages and limits of my account of citizens’ Samaritan duties in the face of injustice.
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Notes
To be clear, I understand duties or obligations as pro tanto, not absolute, reasons for action, such that, if S has a duty to do X, then S ought to do X and S’s failure to do X is wrong, unless S has a reason not to do X at least as strong as his moral reason to do X. This holds for the duties to disobey and resist which I am about to delineate, as well as for the duty to obey the law.
I thank an anonymous reviewer at Res Publica for pressing me on this question.
I do not think that settling these issues matters for my inquiry, though I briefly return to them later in the paper. For discussions of the issue of source, see, e.g., Feinberg (1984, chap. 4), Wellman (2001). On the issue of enforcement, see, e.g., Weinrib (1980), Lipkin (1983), Ripstein (2000). On Samaritan rights, see, e.g., Feinberg (1992), Fabre (2002).
I leave open the question whether the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants might amount to perilous situations.
This presumption in favor of legal means accords with both the principle of proportionality and the principle of parsimony, though neither principle excludes a priori illegal means or requires illegality only be a last resort.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee at Res Publica for suggesting this response. Note that Wellman does it in order to fend off the objection that not everyone’s compliance with the law is necessary for the state to rescue everyone from the perils of the state of nature. But the point is that past a certain threshold of general compliance, particular persons’ obedience to the law does not make any difference to the state’s overall stability.
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Acknowledgments
I have benefited from discussions with friends and audiences at Boston University, Clemson University, the Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference at St Anne’s College, Oxford, the International Social Philosophy Conference at Northeastern University, the Mentoring Project for Pre-Tenure Women Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the Rocky Mountains Ethics Congress at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the Workshop on the Duty to Resist Oppression at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Special thanks are owed to David Lyons, Ann Cudd, Jill Delston, Meena Krishnamurthy, Kristina Meshelski, Melissa Yates, Samuel Huang, Julia Nefsky, Erich Hatala Matthes, Kimberley Brownlee, Carol Hay, Daniel Star, and Gabriel O’Malley for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.
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Delmas, C. Samaritanism and Civil Disobedience. Res Publica 20, 295–313 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9249-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9249-7