Must we (dis)obey unjust laws?

• Grant number: 22/09444-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Álvaro de Vita
• Grantee: Guilherme Cardoso de Moraes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/00236-9 - Must we (dis)obey unjust laws?, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

What are, as citizens, our political and moral duties in unjust democracies? The project proposes to answer this fundamental question by mobilizing the theoretical-normative debate around the concept of civil disobedience as a way of articulating the relationship between imperfect democracies and social injustices. Corresponding to our duties of obedience to just laws, this research will seek to defend the existence of political and moral duties to resist injustice, including an obligation to civilly disobey laws that are blatantly unjust. Thus, the objectives are: (i) to contribute to filling a gap present in contemporary political theory, namely, the little attention that has been given to the issue of social injustice, especially when compared to social justice; (ii) to accompany the theoretical-normative movement of recovery and renewal of the concept of civil disobedience as part of the concern about how to deal with injustices in our current world.