Civil Disobedience And The Logic Of The Content Evolution Of American Constitutional Rights

Civil disobedience is a kind of social action in accordance with legal principles and spirit,which contains at least three elements,namely,the choice of path of civil disobedience,the legitimacy basis of civil disobedience,and the justification of civil disobedience.Among them,the path choice of civil disobedience is mainly used to solve the means and methods of civil action,the legitimacy basis of civil disobedience is mainly used to solve the relationship between social action and the constitution and its legal system,and the justification of civil disobedience is mainly used to solve the social basis of civil action.The study of civil disobedience and the evolution of the constitutional rights of the United States mainly examines the participation in the revision of the US constitutional act as a civil rights movement on the edge of the law.According to Western political theory and its practice in modern times,compared with feudal society,modern countries have constructed their own legitimacy on the basis of citizen's consent,which is different from the previous theological legality,which makes it possible for citizens to participate in different forms.In the modern theory of natural law,citizens,based on individual rationality,have to transform their rights into the laws and policies of the state and government in the modern sense through the form of social contract in order to avoid the "war state of everyone against everyone" and to protect the realization of individual freedom of citizens through the form of government.In this process,the relationship between the“trust-agent” citizen and the state was established.On the one hand,the freedom ofcitizens constitutes the goal of modern state and its government practice.The legitimacy of government governance comes from citizen empowerment.On the other hand,in the process of forming a modern government through political contract to realize civil liberties,in order to avoid the violation and deprivation of civil rights by the government,it is mainly guaranteed through two paths.One is to establish the highest status of the constitution,to incorporate government behavior and civic behavior into the legal framework,and to implement certain within the government.The degree of power separation and the restriction between powers,and the second is to allow citizens to fight against the government's actions that undermine the right to civil liberties under the constitutional conditions,that is,the rights of citizens to disobey.It can be seen that the constitution as the supreme law restricts the behavior of the government and citizens,and allows the “exceptional form”(namely the inconsistency of legal spirit and legal provisions),that is,the existence of the citizen's right to resist.This is a seemingly contradictory combination.It realizes the legality of civil disobedience based on the Constitution.It opposes the legal provisions that undermine the right of civil liberties and obeys the general rights of the legal spirit concerning civil liberties,equality and the pursuit of happiness.This logic of the construction of modern state--the construction of modern state on the basis of the primacy of civil liberty rights to guarantee the practice of civil liberty rights in political society--is particularly evident in the United States.From the perspective of civil disobedience,the changes in the constitutional rights provisions of the United States can be used to understand the logic of the political state and its practice in modern times.In the process of national construction,the United States basically followed the natural law,civic rationality,social contract and constitution,and the logic of state generation since the Enlightenment.As an immigrant country,it avoided the shackles of various religions and traditions in Western Europe,having a certain geographical advantage.In the process of national construction,the United States established the federal state on the basis of citizen empowerment through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention,and in the process of building the federal state,the social actions on the basis of civil disobedience(including social protest,social rejection and even common internal war,etc.)were gradually adopted to promote the development and change of the constitutional rights clause.The main driving force behind this is the constitutional source of legitimacy concerning civil liberties,and it is also affected byvarious political situations and other factors.By examining the evolution of the constitutional rights in the United States and the logic of the civil disobedience movement,we can clearly see the special form of citizen participation,that is,the“exceptional form” of “walking on the edge of the law” and the constitution,how to be based on the citizen's sovereignty.The principles of human rights promote national construction and have always affected the political practice of the United States today.In the first part,this paper mainly investigates the historical origin and realistic development of civil disobedience.In the second part,this paper mainly analyzes the relationship between civil disobedience and the constitution.It can be found that civil disobedience has a long history in Western political history.From the beginning of God's will,to the gradual conversion to citizen-based consent,it always constitutes an important factor that constrains the authority of reality,and participates substantively in the construction of secular states.It develops from the realization of some kind of rationality outside(namely the primacy of civil liberty rights)to the realization of civic rationality(namely the practice of civil liberty right in political society).As the most concentrated representation of the rationality of citizenship in modern countries,the Constitution indirectly or directly recognizes this special form of citizen participation.It can be said that the civil liberty rights stipulated in the Constitution are the basic logic of modern state practice,and citizens disobey the exception form of civil liberty rights practice,subordinate to constitutional principles and spirit.This is just as the ancient citizens' disobedience emphasizes the external rationality.Both citizens and the state need to be in this rationality.It is only in modern times that this rationality is replaced by civil liberties.In the third part,the fourth part and the fifth part,respectively,the American abolition of the slavery movement,the black rights movement and the feminist rights movement are taken as examples to illustrate how the evolution of the US constitutional rights part is achieved through the actions of civil disobedience.The change to explain this special form of civil rights movement constitutes an important driving force for American political change.It plays an irreplaceable role and function compared to government reform,legislative practice and judicial interpretation.It is a constitutional principle.Closely related to the spirit.In the third part of the US abolition of slavery,the American abolitionist movement is a social and political “disobedience” of rights movements,rooted in the universal,undifferentiated civil liberties rights stipulated by the Constitution,facing the challenge of civil rights from the ownership and property rights that slave owners insist on,and eventually evolving into a general civil war.The result of this conflict is the realization of universal,undifferentiated civil rights under the US Constitution,promoted by the civil disobedience movement.In the fourth part of the African American rights movement,the black rights movement is in the same vein as the previous abolitionist movement,and both face similar situations,for example,as abstract rights from the constitutional level of civil liberty,equality and the pursuit of happiness.A concrete process is needed,but in the specific practice process,on the one hand,the change of the black rights appeal is often caused by the change of the actual political situation,and on the other hand,the black civil rights are faced because of the indifference of the political level and the obstacles in the social field.Heavy obstacles.The result of this conflict is the outbreak of the black rights movement and the realization of the constitutional right to freedom and equality.In the fifth part of the feminist rights movement,the American feminist rights movement has been able to continue to advance and realize the right of women equality from abstract to specific,from one field to multiple fields and even the whole society,mainly in the independence.The Declaration and the US Constitution on the right to equality and freedom of citizens,together with the unique historical background of the United States and the cross-correlation of other civil disobedience movements,jointly realize the realization of the equality and freedom of American women.Through the actual examination of the civil disobedience movement in the US constitutional revision process,and the US national political development process,such as the abolition of slavery,the black free rights movement,the feminist rights movement,the basic logic of state construction in modern times can be more clearly demonstrated,especially it is a question of the relationship between citizens and the state.This has important significance for understanding American politics and has important reference significance for the political development of other countries.Because the legitimacy of modern countries is based on sovereignty on the basis of the people,or on the basis of natural human rights,it is necessary to deal with the relationship between citizens and the state within the constitutional framework.The unique civil disobedience of the United States is undoubtedly inspiring.However,as a post-socialist country,in the process of building people's sovereignty and state construction,it is impossible to copy the American citizen's participation experience,especially its special form—civil disobedience,which needs to combine its own social attributes,and clarify the country.On the basis of other differences,we have chosen to draw on the forms and technologies of citizen participation to jointly promote the development of the national governance system and governance capacity.