Right to Resistance and Dissent — T.H. Green, M. K. Gandhi, Harold Laski, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela (New)

T. H. Green argued from a Victorian Oxford study; Gandhi argued from a prison cell in South Africa and then India; Martin Luther King Jr argued from a Birmingham jail; Nelson Mandela argued from the dock at his own trial. Different centuries, different continents, the same underlying claim: obedience to the State has a limit, and beyond that limit resistance is a right, not merely a wrong that happens to be forgiven.

In two minutes

Five thinkers and leaders — T. H. Green, M. K. Gandhi, Harold Laski, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela — each argued, from different traditions, that citizens have a right to resist a State or a law that seriously fails a moral standard, though they differed sharply on the form that resistance should take.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – II: Foundations of Political Obligation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.