In his 1964 paper entitled "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play" Rawls investigates the question of the relationship between law and morality. The question is investigated from the standpoint of the claim that the moral obligation to obey the law "is a special case of the prima facie duty of fair play".
In making this claim Rawls rules out the suggestion that legal obligation could be grounded on a specific principle of its own, not least because, he states, no one wishes to argue this. This point is made rather swiftly and seems to indicate that Rawls could conceive of no form of jurisprudence that attempted to find legal obligation to be of independent standing.
The next point that is raised is the sense of "obligation" that is implied in claiming that there is a moral obligation to obey the law and Rawls claims that the sense of obligation in question is one connected to institutional rules but this apparently vacuous claim is grounded on a specific sense of an "institution" as something that is related to what he termed an "association" in the previous paper on the sense of justice. It is characterised, in other words, by "voluntary acts" in which obligations arise from others. This does imply the slightly odd view that legal obligations have been entered into voluntarily by us and indicates a kind of precedence of moral obligation in relation to law, an impression that is furthered by Rawls stating that crimes of violence are wrong "independently of there being a legal system", something surely true but which shows that law requires assent of a kind to moral principles to gain a footing in the first place. (The later debate with Habermas will partly concern this question.)
In looking further at the special questions arising from thinking about the law Rawls fills in details of a legal system that fits the bill of having a clear and, in a wide sense of the term, "voluntary", hold on us. The first point is that such a system has to satisfy the rule of law meaning that under its reign there are clear and public criteria and that "similar cases are treated similarly". The feature of the rule of law is central to the form of law rather than to specific legal contents. But Rawls also supposes that the legal order that claims such "voluntary" consent also belongs to a democratic system in the sense of ensuring equal citizenship, basic freedoms and general equality of the suffrage.
The discussion subsequently moves on to the question of how the moral obligation to obey the law works given that it appears to imply that we have obligations to obey laws we might think are unjust and even that obeying them will not produce good "overall". One of the points Rawls makes in looking at these apparent problems is that voting, as a basis for law-making, has no characteristics in itself that ensures the best decisions (or even good ones) will be made. It simply decides which policy will be put into effect. So constitutions create mechanisms by which conflicting views are brought to a resolution, one which need not at all settle the dispute in question. The invocation of the duty of "fair play" concerns precisely the basis for following the law in such a situation as we have an obligation not towards legislators but rather towards other citizens and it is the other citizens who have a basis for indignation if we do not follow the law. But this does require that the general constitutional procedures are themselves just.
It is to specify the basis for viewing such a constitution as just that Rawls subsequently proceeds and these bases turn out, perhaps unsurprisingly, to include adoption of his principles of equal liberty and the acceptance that inequality is arbitrary unless it can be shown to be to everyone's advantage. Under such conditions even a law that is unjust still mandates an obligation that it be followed. Noticeably, Rawls' conditions here are stricter than those Kant appears to adopt when discussing the problems with any claimed "right" to revolution in the Doctrine of Right. Kant's account is part of a general argument concerning the nature of right but it does not require anything like the second principle Rawls adopts.
Rawls next looks at the problem with viewing laws from the standpoint of net overall good rather than in terms of a general moral obligation to obey the law. The basic point of this discussion is to bring out problems with basing a system of justice on the principle of utility. Rawls states that unjust institutions cannot be identified by the principle of utility and that the obligation to obey the law cannot be overridden by this principle. However, Rawls confesses that to establish this claim would require "a deeper argument based on an analysis of the concept of right" and he does not give such an argument, a sense in which the argument of the essay does not reach the level of Kant's Doctrine of Right. Rather than provide such an account of the concept of right Rawls reverts back to the general point that to attribute to justice an absolute weight is to interpret the concept of right by means of the sense of justice as grounded in an initial position of equality (thus invoking the original position).
The general question of the obligation to obey the law is settled for Rawls by a series of tests including those that would look at the justice of the constitution, the depth of the injustice the law enacted, whether those enacting it wish the injustice to result and whether we can realistically hope to repeal the law. This already looks towards questions concerned with civil disobedience but these questions aren't here taken further.
The legal system generally is looked at in this essay as a system of social cooperation that requires equilibrium between conflicting claims. The essay seems thus to be something of an intermediate stage in Rawls' thinking as we need more detail yet of both the general conception of the social/legal system and of the means by which civil disobedience is to be understood.
In the same year of 1963 that Rawls first introduced the notion of the "original position", he also sets out an account of moral psychology in his paper called "The Sense of Justice". This paper opens with a citation from Rousseau's Emile indicating that the sense of justice is not formed by the understanding alone but is "a true sentiment of the heart enlightened by reason". In response to this, and following the pattern of the "analytic construction" that was used in his account of the original position, Rawls provides in this piece a "psychological construction". This is developed in relation to two questions, namely to whom is justice owed and what is it that accounts for us doing what justice requires?
Prior to laying out the "psychological construction" in detail Rawls first indicates that questions of justice arise in situations where people who have no position of authority in relation to each other have to settle or acknowledge the rules of the institutions they participate in and determine shares in benefits and burdens. This leads to stating the two principles of equal rights to the most extensive liberty compatible with like liberty for all and that inequalities are treated as arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect they will work to everyone's advantage. The former principle is very Kantian in formulation. Explicating the principles leads Rawls to restate the "analytic construction" of the original position again.
After going through the "analytic construction" Rawls returns to instances in which the principle of equality applies, indicating that they relate to institutions as part of the definition of them. This is slightly odd since the definition Rawls earlier gave of institutions only specified that they were "publicly recognized systems of rules" which doesn't seem to imply the principle of equality unless there is a presumed analytic link between publicity and equality. The second level at which the principle of equality is said to operate is in terms of the structure of an institution or social system and this requires seeing them as bound by the two principles derived from the "analytic construction". This neatly erases the difference between the principle concerning inequality and that concerning liberty since the latter included the notion of "equal liberty" but that seems rather too neat a move. Finally, the principle of equality is said to apply to the original position itself and that point is what is used to indicate the need for a general account of moral psychology as it presupposes a view of how cognition relates to morality (or a principle of practical reason).
Rawls' second question concerning what accounts for the fact that we and others do what justice requires indicates a need to find a view of how action takes place that is not, on Rawls' view, purely understood through the concept of rationality though what he seems to mean by this is that is it is not grasped by theoretical reason. Having placed these preliminary points in place we move on to the "psychological construction" which is described by Rawls as being something that is not to be taken empirically though it is to be thought of as "reasonably plausible".
The "psychological construction" is grounded on an idealisation of Piaget's view of the development of guilt in children where Piaget distinguished between authority guilt, association guilt and principle guilt though again the place given here to guilt is said by Rawls to be only "a matter of convenience". This use of guilt has, it should be said, rather large overtones, since it is, after all, central to Christian morality in particular. Authority guilt is characterized easily in relation to positions of children who basically accept that there are people - parents - in constituted places of authority whose injunctions are meant to be obeyed and so authority guilt is what is felt when we do not obey. This requires elaboration of a notion of rational self-love which requires taking seriously someone who, whilst in authority over you, nonetheless manifests some serious care for you. It does, however, assume that the one authority is exercised over does not possess serious standards of their own and is thus rightly governed by judgments they are incapable of making themselves.
The second form of guilt, association guilt, relates not to the standards of authority figures but rather peers with whom one has formed bonds of relation such as friendship and mutual trust. Breaking bond with these others produces association guilt. It is with regard to this that Rawls first makes manifest the whole point of this discussion is to enable thought about the "stability" of just relations since if others will not follow bonds or are generally thought likely not to then this loosens the whole association. Intimations of game theory are clearly present at this point of Rawls' analysis as becomes clear when he uses the discussion to interpret Hobbes:
One way of interpreting the Hobbesian sovereign is as an agency added to unstable forms of cooperation in such a way that it is no longer to anyone's advantage not to do his part given that others will do theirs. (104)
Friendship and mutual trust are seen, on this pattern as kinds of games of which the Hobbesian social contract is a supreme example.
The third form of guilt, principle guilt, requires separating ourselves from ties to others of any particular specified type and seeing how injury of anonymous others still produces in us feelings of guilt. This is taken to arise from the schemes of cooperation having been extended beyond their point of origin (a kind of Rawlsian "genealogy"). It requires then we accept and make explicit general principles of justice. If everyone in a system is known to have such feelings of justice then we have a situation that Rawls terms "stable".
The whole account relies, as Rawls himself states, on the notion of "moral feeling" but, whilst this notion can be found in Kant, Rawls has not referred at all to Kant in expounding it and his next move is, rather, Wittgensteinian in general flavour as he now speaks of characteristic linguistic expressions, behaviour manifestations and sensations that accompany moral feelings rather than trying to give any kind of transcendental account of moral feeling.
The account that follows of why we act on our duty of justice in particular cases is thus one that assumes the idealised anthropological account to broadly hold. Rawls sketches the idea of someone who does not feel a sense of justice but it is evident that this idea is merely a limit-case and not one that he takes seriously as something that could really arise.
The final discussion of who the obligation of justice is owed to revisits again the original position in order to describe such a situation as a "natural lottery". Finally Rawls effectively identifies the sense of justice with Kant's notion of a good will which is done in a preemptory way. The general argument has been intended to show that the capacity for a sense of justice is the key aspect of moral personality in the theory of justice but it is fairly evident that the argument of this piece is less than convincing.
Over at New APPS Eric Schliesser has nominated Sarah Hutton as the week's most "under-rated" philosopher. Sarah was, some years ago now, a lecturer of mine who co-taught me a course on Renaissance literature and I still remember the rhythms of her talk. She also addressed a seminar in Manchester recently at my invitation and it is good to see that someone is rating her work in this way.
It appears, from a recent news story, that Bradley Manning, the person officially believed to be responsible for leaking documents to Wikileaks, has been reading Kant whilst in prison. The story suggests that Manning requested copies of both the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Pure Reason as reading matter. No reports have yet emerged concerning either why he asked for them or what he has got from reading them.
The perusal of the Critique of Practical Reason will no doubt have confirmed to him that the moral basis of action is not one grounded on external factors but requires a notion of universalisation to be included in it. This may well be something that he will want to include in any defence he makes of his actions though it would be something of a stretch to see how the whole Wikileaks episode relates to the foundations of moral philosophy through the formulation of a supreme principle. Perhaps he should instead try the Metaphysics of Morals as there he will discover reflections on both casuistry and basic questions about the nature of civil society and its relationship to the state.
There is a very good posting over at EAS Manchester addressing the ways in which the implementation of the Browne report will harm higher education in general and humanities in particular. It is useful to pull out from this posting the following crucial points that can sometimes get lost or receive insufficient emphasis:
1.The Arts and Humanities Research Council is directing funding for research into areas that have been determined for it by central government which includes research on the government idea of the so-called "Big Society".
2. The British Academy has ended the small grants scheme that was particularly heavily used in research in fine art.
3. There is increasing pressure to push humanities research that is connected to business, something that will ensure the marginalisation of research in all kinds of areas. In philosophy, it impacts on everyone who is not engaged in applied ethics programmes and even they will be pushed in a very specific direction.
4. There is virtually no support within the universities for the very notion of "impact", something on which the government is silent as it is has generally been in response to the criticisms that have been made of the Browne report's de-emphasis of humanities research in general.
It is clearly the case that humanities research, if carried out anywhere other than a select elite of institutions, will be increasingly difficult to sustain. Under these pressures, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of us are determined either to leave the university to pursue research elsewhere or are desperately trying to make it into the few places that will still deserve the name of "university".
I've just been reading an interesting article on the notion of left-libertarianism. The very notion of left-libertarianism is one that many today find paradoxical and the reasons for this are primarily due to the predominance of Robert Nozick's account of libertarianism in contemporary discussions of it. However, quite apart from the general questions raised by anarchism, questions which generally do not come from a rightist position, there have been attempts in recent years, to develop left-libertarianism as a new political philosophy.
The questions posed by such an approach would be worthy of attention on another day as would, indeed, the questions raised by Nozick's own position. For today, however, what interested me in the piece in question was the way it posed a problem for standard kinds of libertarian argument which go from uses of "free market" in a general, philosophical sense, to descriptive claims about existing market structures taken, unproblematically to exemplify and actualize the philosophical view. The author of the piece is right to describe the tendency to make this move as a form of "conflation" and the conflation it involves is a general one of identifying positions of political philosophy with actual institutional arrangements around us in the societies in which we live.
What this points to is the need to distinguish clearly between the ideals political philosophy sets out and the often imperfect ways in which these are represented in political situations. Kant, for one, was always keen to emphasise this point which is why he speaks of forms of government as imperfect representations of ideas. Keeping this point in mind is also what allows political philosophy to retain a critical edge, something badly needed, particularly in the light of the glaring injustices that decidedly plague social arrangements.
An interesting philosophical question emerges for me when thinking about some of the implications of Yvette Cooper's attack on the UK government in a recent issue of the Guardian. Cooper here takes issue with the view, asserted by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, that there is a problem with the "benefits culture" as it leads to people being dependent upon the state. In reply Cooper basically argues that certain types of state benefits are in fact important for women, in particular, to achieve independence and that withdrawal of them ensures that women will be less independent.
Cooper, in posing the question of independence in this way poses an important problem for a certain philosophical way of viewing the state. This way of viewing them consists in understanding the state as a burden on individuals that has to be removed in order for their self-realization to become possible. It is plausible to think of this as a kind of Nozickian view though it need not lead one to embrace his overall libertarian position (about which there is some reason to be cautious in any event in terms of its commitments as is discussed over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians). Regardless of this reference for the purposes of this posting the general point is one in which it would appear that individual achievement is comprehended in terms of market behaviours and such behaviours are thought of as impeded by state intervention. By contrast, what Cooper is pointing to is that the circumstances of women do not match this view and this is a significant philosophical point.
Certainly, if we look at how the understanding of "independence" works in Kant's political philosophy we can see grounds for support for Cooper's point. In his essay on theory and practice, for example, Kant describes the civil condition as based on three principles, the freedom of every member of the society simply as a human being, their equality with each other as subject and the independence of every member of the commonwealth as a citizen. The first two conditions are universal but the third is not.
Looking at independence more closely and before turning to what is most contentious in Kant's view here we find that the property of independence is what enables one to be a citizen, that is "a colegislator" (Ak. 8: 294). The quality that entitles one to this designation is "being one's own master (sui generis), hence having some property (and any art, craft, fine art, or science can be counted as property) that supports him" (Ak. 8: 295). The point about this designation is that possession of it ensures that the one in question serves no one except the commonwealth.
Before turning to first the smaller and then the larger problems with this view let's first note its historical role. Clearly Kant is here aiming at ensuring that those qualified as citizens are not in the position, common enough before the 20th century and often during it in a number of places, of being effectively the stooge of someone else who has one in their power. The servants on large estates, for example, if allowed a vote might well simply vote for who the lord or holder of the estate told them to since this would ensure that he would return favours to them in kind. And one can imagine a number of obvious variations on this theme. By contrast, the independent worker who Kant has here in mind would be able simply to attend to matters of citizenship without having some pre-given vested interest in the outcome. This same basis of argument also supports Rousseau's view that "partial societies" should be either prevented within the civil condition or at least not allowed to become overly powerful (Social Contract Book II, Chapter 3). Admission of such "partial societies" or associations prevents independent thought from being expressed as by means of them the individual is brought under the heel of a group which is not that of the general will.
Now there are two kinds of problem that emerge from Kant's account of independence. The first, smaller problem, is that of assessing which kinds of work involve the possession of property and Kant is here led to elaborate distinctions between barbers and wig-makers, wood-choppers and tailors before admitting it is "somewhat difficult to determine what is required in order to be able to claim the rank of a human being who is his own master" (Ak. 8: 295n).
So the smaller problem can be encapsulated in terms of how to characterise the work that is included from the work that is excluded from having the designation of proving you are selling your own property in engaging in it rather than merely granting to another the use of one's own powers. Kant's division of labour in these terms parallels but is not quite equivalent to Adam Smith's account of productive and unproductive labour. On Smith's division the point was to find which labour contributed to a general increase of wealth as opposed to using revenue for services that had no lasting value. Kant's, by contrast, is meant to establish the kind of labour that entitles someone to claim that they are self-standing in the community and not dependent on someone else. Kant's division is clearly meant to show that the class of those who, in an important sense, control the property they sell and do not require to be hired by someone further (although they may in fact be so hired, they don't have to be) as opposed to those whose position is intrinsically dependent on the decisions of another and could therefore not in principle exist as a labourer without that other. The division is evidently hard to draw in practice but there is a theoretical rationale available so let's assume this is a lesser problem in the sense that, whilst there are vague boundaries to the division there is something clear in principle.
The second and major problem, however, concerns another way of deciding who fits into the class of independent people capable of being citizens. Kant declares in addition to the property qualification involved in the notion of independence also a "natural" quality, namely that of "not being a child or woman" (Ak. 8: 295). And this takes us to the hub of the matter. The case of the child is more complicated than Kant allows given that child labour is far from an anomaly but is frequently resorted to in a number of different circumstances and conditions and it is not obvious that all types of child labour would fall under the less favoured category. But obviously the most pressing problem is the casualness of Kant's exclusion of women from the class of independent labourers capable of being citizens.
Rather than using this point as an occasion to bash Kant however I want instead to indicate the basic rationale for his position and in the process point to the deeper philosophical point that Cooper has rightly raised concerning the UK government's withdrawal of benefits from women. The "natural" quality that Kant does not here name but hints at in connecting women here with children is the obvious susceptibility women have to becoming pregnant and the subsequent responsibility that arises for them to deal with child-rearing. Let's leave aside the large question of whether there is justice in general arrangements of child-rearing and simply concentrate on the general assumption that, due to giving birth to children, women have some kind of primary responsibility for caring for them.
Due to this general assumption there is a basis for Kant's remark concerning women's lesser capacity for independence if we simply take this to mean that they frequently have to rely on income that their own employment did not generate. Clearly, in Western countries today, most women do in fact work and frequently engage in activities that Kant would have to accept were forms of work that qualified them for being viewed as independent. However, what Cooper's point concerns is that there are often enabling conditions provided by the state that allow women to assert this independence. And that speaks to a sense in which Kant's intuition here still has some validity. What that suggests, however, is three important points.
Firstly, women are unequally affected by the withdrawal of state income support and general state services given that they are frequently primary carers for children and such services are often targeted at support for such carers. Secondly, given women's unequal status in the first regard, they, as a group, have that much less incentive to accept positions that involve the withdrawal of state support and are thus structurally that much less likely to be tempted by any philosophical or political arguments that pull away such state support given that they will suffer the greater adverse consequences from this. Thirdly, the nature of what is involved in viewing people as "independent" in civil arrangements is importantly different depending on which gender you belong to, a point Kant correctly recognised even if it did not lead Kant (any more than it has led Nick Clegg) in the right direction of travel on the understanding of such independence.
The device of the "original position" in Rawls' A Theory of Justice is one of the most famous elements of the work but there is little discussion of how he arrived at the idea. In his 1963 paper "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice", a paper republished in the Collected Papers, we find the original version of the notion of the "original position" minus the "veil of ignorance" which is not introduced for another 4 years. The description of the idea in this early paper is interesting both in its own right and as part of an account of the genesis of the developed notion in A Theory of Justice.
This paper opens with a description of the notion of justice, a notion carefully distinguished from a general vision of a good society as it is "only one part of any such conception". What justice requires, however, is the elimination of arbitrary distinctions and the establishment of a "proper balance or equilibrium" between competing claims. Naturally these points leave everything open as Rawls himself admits since it is only the specific conception of justice developed that will tell us what distinctions are arbitrary.
The conception of justice that is developed in the piece is intended to apply to political institutions which are described as "publicly recognized systems of rules", rules that are normally acted on and which define offices, rights and privileges. This institutional conception of justice is already pointing towards though it does not yet specifically state the notion of the "basic structure".
As the title of this piece suggests Rawls was specifically concerned in it to discuss constitutional liberties although he includes here amongst such the notion of equality of opportunity (perhaps in response to the point about arbitrary distinctions). These liberties "define and establish an initial position of equal liberty" for all citizens in the social system.
Having defined this territory Rawls goes on to provide a non-utilitarian argument for these constitutional liberties and this argument draws on the notion of "justice as fairness" that was first elaborated in an article of 1958 which I discussed a little while ago. The notion is defined here in the following way:
The concept of justice which I shall use may be stated, for the moment, in the form of two principles: first, each person participating in an institution or affected by it has equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and, second, inequalities as defined by the institutional structure or fostered by it are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out to everyone's advantage and provided that the positions and offices to which they attach or from which they may be gained are open to all. These principles express the concept of justice as relating three ideas: liberty, equality, and reward for services contributing to the common advantage. (75)
It is clear that the first principle has a relationship to the liberty principle in A Theory of Justice and that the second has a connection with some popular formulations of the difference principle. The key point about the second principle given here, however, is, again, its specific statement of a view of "openness to talents". It is intriguing that the third idea that Rawls here states as included in the concept of justice as fairness is one that is akin to the notion of social utility even though it is precisely to provide an alternative to this notion that Rawls is presenting his conception.
The principle of liberty is indicated to be surprisingly restricted since although it throws the burden of proof on anyone who wishes to restrict liberty there can be "and often is" a justification for doing so states Rawls. In commenting on the second principle it is also indicated that inequality is understood here not to affect differences within a hierarchy but rather "differences in the benefits and burdens" that arise from them. The principles are applied to institutions and, in this application, Rawls introduces the methodological idea of the "representative man" and what he might be thought to hold. "Unless one is prepared to criticize the system of institutions from the standpoint of a representative man holding some particular office, one has no complaint against it." (76) Institutions can be said to be just or fair when those who participate in them could propose its rules for adoption in a situation of equal liberty.
It is after indicating that this is the way to understand the justice of institutions that Rawls introduces his original conception of the "original position". In this original conception it is framed as an "analytic construction". Within this construction we take a society of persons who are "normally self-interested", rational (with some conditions of this notion spelled out) and have sufficiently similar needs for interests to be broadly complementary. They already belong to a society of institutions so we are not envisaging them setting these institutions up. Rather, the device is here used to assess how they could determine what kinds of complaint against practices should be accepted as legitimate.
This procedure requires the persons in question to propose principles on which complaints can be tried, complaints that are subjected to three conditions. The conditions are: firstly, that such principles as are accepted will apply to complaints of others, secondly, that no one's complaints will be heard until everyone is of basically the same mind about the means by which they will be judged and, thirdly, that the principles proposed on any one occasion are binding for the future unless there are special circumstances. So, effectively, this process of adjudication of complaints creates a set of norms that provides the basis for cases to be aggregated together under general headings. The general point of this procedure is then highlighted: "The restrictions which would so arise may be thought of as those a person would keep in mind if he were designing a social system in which his enemy were to assign him his place" (78). Even if the most ill-willed person were to be taken as giving you your place in the social system you would be safe, as it were, given these guarantees of principle and process.
The suggestion is that this "analytic construction" would lead the persons in question to adopt Rawls' earlier cited two principles of equal liberty and an openness to talents that is meritocratic. Inequalities are thus embraced by those considering the "analytic construction" since, it is suggested, they would work as "incentives" to better efforts, incentives that can be considered as "concessions to human nature" (79).
The "analytic construction" is not, however, taken to be conclusive by Rawls as mandating his two principles as he considers what he terms a "natural objection" to it. The "natural objection" is that some might prefer to contract into a caste system rather than a society governed by the two principles of justice. Rawls argues against this objection both by considering the notion that persons know their talents and that they do not. If they do not know their talents then they need to consider the simple remoteness of the possibility that they could be in the highest caste. If talents are known, by contrast, the more able can point to the second principle as a guarantee of welfare for the less able.
The general argument of the piece also reaches a Kantian point towards the conclusion as Rawls indicates here that there is a peculiar feature of the concept of justice, namely, that it treats each person as an equal sovereign and "requires a unanimous acknowledgement from a certain original position of equal liberty" (94). The argument of the piece is, compared to the elaboration of the original position later, fairly primitive and the discussion of the counter-example, whilst anticipating Rawls' later problems with perfectionist accounts of society, is far from really discussing the assumptions involved in social orders that are not based on openness to talents. Despite these problems it is illuminating to see that the original "original position" is one that works within the constraints of an existing order and has the purpose of providing a rationale for complaints within existent institutions. So it was not originally conceived as a direct replacement for the social contract but more for a response to the utilitarian demand for justification of legitimate complaints.
The student demonstrations that culminated in the disturbances at the Conservative Party HQ late last year resulted in a series of prosecutions of campaigners. Amongst these the most high-profile was the case of Ed Woollard who, in the spur of the moment, threw an object from the roof, an incident that received much more attention than the violent actions of the Coalition government. There is now a website that has been set up to protest the sentence Woollard was given and to campaign for his continued education: it can be found here.
