WELCOME TO ROUND 2 OF THE FUTURE OF EUROPE E-DEBATE COMPETITION!
The topic for the 2nd debate is:
Civil disobedience and actions are justified when the justice system and rule of law are undermined.
In this debate Team EngagEU 2 (Affirmative) will face The EUnity (negative).
The 1st debater of the affirmative team has 24 hours to post the 1st speech of the debate. Even if the speech is posted before the 24 hours expire, the 1st negative speakers’ 24 hours of preparation time will begin when the initial time expires.
Before posting please consult Guildelines and the Online Debate Guide.
Good luck to all teams!
RESULT
Because the opposition team did not post their speech in the allotted time, this match is won by the proposition team, Team EngagEU 2, by default. If you would like feedback on the match as is, please contact me by email.
Noticing the arguments brought forward during the rebuttal by the opposition, we are going to defend our belief that acts of civil disobedience (CD) are justified if the judicial system and the rule of law are undermined. We will do so by criticizing the rhetoric methods applied to counter our arguments and by critically discussing content-related issues by referring to the main points made.
We would like to thank the negative team for presenting a third definition of CD by Belz. Just as much as the definition provided by our team based on Rawls and Habermas, it precisely describes what an act of CD entails: publicly and non-violently breaking a national law in full awareness of the possible consequences in order to point towards deficiencies. Bearing this in mind, we would like to rebut the assertion of not having set the motion properly. In this regard, we did not only provide a disambiguate definition of what we refer to as CD, by pointing to Art. 2 TEU, we also explicitly outlined the standards which have to be met in order for political systems to be recognised as being under the rule of law.
The negative team supports our opinion that the EU lacks mechanisms to ensure the rights of citizens attempting to stand up to the violation of their democratic rights. Following this concession, our opponents introduce a counter-argument by misquoting our statement regarding the contextual justification of CD. We certainly did say that “CD is the only remaining option for citizens to express their disregard for the internal political threat against the justice system and rule of law.” But we initiated this sentence with “in many occasions”, followed by another sentence which legitimises such acts as a final straw in the “attempt to draw attention to violations of the rule of law.” The following counterargument defines precisely this omitted part as a blind spot in our argumentation.
Content wise, the main point made by the negative team is that an act of CD might entail consequences for the physical integrity of the citizens being involved in the corresponding act as well as the political and economic order. In this regard, our opponents refer to the violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration in Romania in August 2018. As possible consequences, they denominate a violent suppression of the corresponding act or even a revolutionary overthrow of the political system itself. We believe this argument to be flawed. If a political system is as corrupted that it systematically subordinates entire sets of opinions within its territory, it has already been bent towards the advantage of the most powerful actors in society. It is always regrettable if demonstrations end in violence and we emphatically criticise the military interventions which happened in Romania last August. However, this reaction to peaceful protests shows how pressing the need for change actually is. We think of it as an admirable conduct if citizens stand in for their right to demonstrate, if they make use of their right to utter their political opinion, if they take into account the consequences of their actions. If no legal alternative remains to be taken, CD must be justified to ensure human dignity and the rule of law.
The opposition supports our belief that CD is per definition a form of freedom of expression. Despite this admission, they argue against applying this fundamental right due to the fact that it could provoke anarchical tendencies. We are convinced that CD is per definition an anarchical act. Both relate to each other in a gradual process which should never be misinterpreted as diametrically opposed to one another. The consequences resulting from such a misinterpretation would be severe for the democratic constitution of any society. Social change can only come to happen if citizens stand in for their rights. The freedom of expression must allow us to cross borders to publicly criticise what needs to be criticised. People like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Gandhi are proof of this.
The negative team is arguing against use of one’s fundamental human right of free expression because it could have consequences for the financial and economic system. We believe it to be immoral putting the economy over fundamental human rights and the rule of law. The latter two are prerequisites for social, cultural and eventually economic wealth in any society. We therefore repeat the closing appeal from our last speech. In democracies, societal development is only possible by critically evaluating its guidelines and social institutions. CD is a constructive instrument for citizens to make such boundaries visible, to criticise outdated social norms and stand in for fundamental rights.
Before we start, we need to set the motion properly because we believe it is just too vague. So, by civil disobedience we’re talking about a social action without any sort of violence, directed towards the state laws which are considered illegal. Moreover, as Joseph Betz stated in “Social Justice theory and practice” (1970) the act of civil disobedience breaks a law which appears to be valid, but which isn’t a law governing basic human decencies; it’s against a specific law rather than an entire legal system and it lacks violence; it is public and open in its commission, open to its consequences (that includes punishment). By undermined justice system and rule of law, we’re referring to a corrupt system, in which the laws are against the Constitution’s principles and made in order to save certain people from imprisonment, grant certain people immunity to police investigation etc. As such, we believe that civil disobedience and actions are NOT justified even when the justice system and rule of law are undermined because laws are made so that they can keep the order among the citizens and protect certain politicians.
The Affirmative Team brought up Art. 7 of the TEU, also known as the “nuclear weapon” against the disobedient EU members, and we must say that this article is a mere threat in order to “force” EU states to abide to EU’s law. Indeed, the EU lacks “mechanisms to ensure the rights of individual citizens attempting to stand up to the violation of their democratic rights” however “civil disobedience is the only remaining option for citizens to express their disregard for the internal political threat against the justice system and rule of law.” is often times false when we’re speaking about an undermined justice system. In this case, the rule of law can “be bent” until it favors the politicians in charge and wreaks havoc among the citizens; the citizens and public forces such as the police or the military. The best example is Romania and the events which occurred in August, 2018. The peaceful protest held on 10th of August and the police brutality the people suffered in an undermined justice system and rule of law is the reason why civil disobedience is not justified because it can easily spark a full-scale revolution.
Now our main argument is that civil disobedience, while it is a form of free expression, it can lead to anarchy and chaos whether the judicial system and rule of law are undermined or not. Bear in mind that in a corrupt society where the judicial system has lost the entirety of its creditability, civil disobedience can ensue a lot faster anarchy among the citizens since it may appear as the one and only method through which citizens can regain the power to structurally change their society. Thus, civil disobedience is not justified in an undermined rule of law and justice system since they can be harshly punished because of it.
Besides that, since civil disobedience manifests itself through strikes, protests etc, people will stop going to their daily jobs. Because of this, the country’s financial and economic foundations will come crashing down and its national economy and productivity will stagnate and decline in short time. When it comes to the EU, a state in this cause can become one of the poorest states and this can be an inconvenient criteria for EU’s standards which can later lead to the stat’s isolation and its EU exit.
In conclusion, we believe that civil disobedience and actions are NOT justified when the justice system and rule of law are undermined since it can cause many negative effects (presented above) both internally and externally for a state.
In democratic societies, freedom of expression is a fundamental principle which enables citizens to participate politically. In contrast to forms of government which apply legal positivism, democracies are based upon the belief that its citizens are capable of deciding their own faith. Beyond electoral legitimation, this includes the possibility of criticizing social injustice evoked by legal guidelines. On this basis, we would like to set this motion by stating that civil disobedience and actions are justified when the judicial system and rule of law are undermined:
The European Union is based upon clearly defined and irrevocable values which apply to both member states and their citizens. Being part of the European Union means sticking to those values. In this regard, the Treaty of Lisbon (TEU) states that the “Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail” (Art. 2; TEU). Setting standards such as those of our union of values also entails concerning ourselves with the question of their operational implementation in the event of fundamental disregard of our values. This is not merely a question of political philosophy or democratic theory but rather a substantial and tangible problem the European Union is currently faced with in member states such as Poland and Hungary.
Whereas Art. 7 of the TEU introduces a general procedure for the European Institutions in order to confront regimes undermining the rule of law, the EU still lacks mechanisms to ensure the rights of individual citizens attempting to stand up to the violation of their democratic rights. In many occasions, civil disobedience is the only remaining option for citizens to express their disregard for the internal political threat against the justice system and rule of law. We are in favour of justified civil disobedience when EU citizens, as a final straw, attempt to draw attention to violations of the rule of law and thus to a serious threat to our common values. In this sense, we refer to actions which qualify as free expression of speech, such as demonstrating when systematically forbidden, sit-down strikes, hunger strikes, chaining oneself against objects, squatting, whistle-blowing etc.
After having outlined the necessity and topicality of civil disobedience, we will now proceed with politically justifying this motion based upon theoretical considerations by John Rawls’ Theory of Justice (1983) and Jürgen Habermas’ Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State (1985).
According to Rawls, civil disobedience is a calculated infringement of rules. It is thereby of central significance that the illegality of this symbolic infringement is committed in order to emphasise the urgency of a course that is both morally justified and oriented towards the common good of the corresponding society. Hence, we do not speak of civil disobedience when individual political or economic interests are the underlying motivation. The same applies for any kind of violent crimes or fraud. In addition, Habermas states that civil disobedience is to be understood as a last resort after the failure of all common democratic practices and the rule of law. Thereby, the public nature of the statement made by the corresponding act of disobedience qualifies as a political statement and is consequently a viable instrument to improve the juridical system of a state with a fully-developed political culture. We are convinced that the European Union disposes of such an elaborated political culture.
Europe looks back on a changeful history marked by times of cultural and financial prosperity on the one hand, but also war, exploitation, colonialisation and social discrimination on the other hand. If we want to ensure that the extended period of peace and collaboration, we currently experience faces a prosperous future, it must be possible to lawfully confront our political system with its legal blind spots. Civil disobedience is per definition part of the fundamental right of the freedom of expression. In democracies, societal development is only possible by critically evaluating its guidelines and social institutions. Civil disobedience is a constructive instrument for citizens to make such boundaries visible, to criticise outdated social norms and stand in for their own fundamental rights. Nobody should be punished for making use of the freedom of speech.