Confronting Injustice

David Lyons challenges us to confront grave injustices committed in the United States, from the colonists' encroachments on Indian lands to slavery and the legacy of racism. He calls upon legal and political theorists to take these social wrongs seriously in their approaches to moral obligation under law and the justification of civil disobedience.

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The essays presented in this volume challenge both theorists and citizens to confront grave injustices committed in the United States. David Lyons encourages us to take a fresh look at the beginnings of America, including the colonists' early adoption of race-based slavery even though it was unlawful and why those who rebelled against English oppression were responsible for greater injustices against their Native American neighbors. Confronting injustice requires us to consider how delegates to the 1787 constitutional convention readily embraced increased protections for chattel slavery, why the federal government later abandoned Reconstruction, and why the nation allowed former slave owners to establish a new system of racial oppression called Jim Crow. It requires us to ask why America's official rejection of white supremacy is combined with an unwillingness to address continuing racial stratification. Confronting injustice calls upon political theorists to test their views in the crucible of social history. It challenges those who debate abstractly the idea of an obligation to obey the law to consider the implications of grievous injustices. It calls upon those who assume that their society is now 'reasonably just' to ask when that transformation occurred, despite the fact that children who are black or poor are denied equal opportunity.