I'm struggling with Joseph Raz's analysis of the right to civil disobedience, and a piece of what's bothering me shows up in this paragraph: "Liberal states do not make the legitimacy of political action dependent on the cause it is meant to serve. People may support political aims of all complexions. But the right to political action is circumscribed in such states by limitations as the form of the permissible actions. Given that we are used to thinking in this way of lawful political action, it is only natural to extend the same approach to unlawful political activity."
But this seems seriously to miss the point. The "form of the permissible actions" is, precisely and reductively, a legal form. Illegal action, by definition, departs from legality, so it seems to me we really would be correct to hold it to a different, and presumably higher, moral standard. Thoughts?
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