If laws were meant to be continuously obeyed without question, would our laws have progressed as far as they have today? The general audience of Americans either do not know, do not care, or just do not want to do anything about issues along each level of government. Granted, a small percentage do care enough to make some form of an organization; but this small percentage isn’t enough at times. With this small percentage, each organization has a different way going about making a change in government but some of these methods are too weak to decimate an unjust law. If all else fails, civil disobedience is the way to go.
By all else fails, I mean that the passive ways of objecting to an unjust law are simply not enough for the government to act upon the issue. Some of the passive methods are writing letters (ranked second for effectiveness), in-person visits (ranked first), emails (third), telephone call (fourth), etc. For your local and state government, the mentioned methods will work but sometimes the ordinary methods will not work on federal level law. When these methods do not work on the federal level methods like these will generally work: making a court case in your local circuit court and work it to the Supreme Court, protesting in a subtle way, and civil disobedience.
To analyze this a little further starting with making a court case, court systems are a bit expensive and the chances are relatively low to make it to the Supreme Court. If it does succeed on making it to the Supreme Court, the case is more than likely going to fail. To observe this method for yourself, there is a channel on the television that actually shows the live film of the court cases being presented to the Supreme Court Justice. After watching a few cases for one of my previous political science course, I come to the realization that winning a court case on that level is difficult.
Protesting is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate a citizens concern against an unjust law but sometimes the original intent dies too quick. By that I mean to portray that protests start off strong, but after a few failed attempts; the majority of the protest groups give up on the issue thinking that nothing else can be done. That way of thinking is false because Americans are not quitters. Since when do we back down and stay quiet for a little while longer till something pops up on the news that sparks interest again, but this time it attracts a bigger audience? All that should be done is a new approach and continuing to attract more of the general audience.
The last method, my favorite, is civil disobedience which I learned not by a political science class but English instead. In my American Literature course, my classmates and I had to read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau wrote this book based on his life and his somewhat form of a revolt within his community. Civil Disobedience is based on the time where Americans had to pay a poll tax to vote which was deemed unjust since voting for elected officials was a right every citizen had within the country. As a result to this law, citizens did not pay the poll tax and people like Thoreau was placed in jail for a short period of time; however, that short period of time gained more people to follow this example. The act of civil disobedience during this time worked and led the government to eventually pass the twenty-fourth amendment prohibiting government to charge a poll tax.
Another prime example of civil disobedience is when Congress passed the eighteenth amendment which prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol, country wide ban. After the ban, the crime rate rose significantly due to bootleggers and gangs (Al Capone). Take a huge guess though, people still made, sold, and drank alcohol which is an act of civil disobedience. As a campaign speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke on the push to repeal the Prohibition act which is now known as the twenty-first amendment.
As a conclusion, my point was to demonstrate that civil disobedience does have to occur sometimes in our government. Bringing things to attention without breaking the law only works to a certain extent. Americans should not have to follow an unjust law and that is why laws take a significant time to be repealed, revised, or made into a law, so I am going to leave you with this: would you perform civil disobedience against an unjust law or sit around and let it continue to happen? Comment below your stance.
