Tony Milligan argues that some forms of covert non-human animal rescue, wherein activists anonymously and illegally free non-human animals from confinement, should be understood as acts of civil disobedience. However, most traditional understandings of civil disobedience require that the civil disobedient act publicly rather than covertly. Thus Milligan’s proposal is that we revise our understanding of civil disobedience to allow for covert in addition to public disobedience. I argue we should not. Milligan cannot justify using paradigm cases to expand the (...) scope of civil disobedience without justifying similar reasons to limit the scope, and he does nto give convincing reasons for discarding the communication requirement, according to which an action cannot count as civil disobedience unless it is communicative. The immediate conclusion is that animal rescue is not civil disobedience, while the broader conclusion is one about civil disobedience more broadly: an act must be public to count as civil disobedience. (shrink)

We should conceive of illegal covert animal rescue as acts of “subrevolution” rather than as civil disobedience. Subrevolutions are revolutions that aim to overthrow some part of the government rather than the entire government. This framework better captures the relevant values than the opposing suggestion that we treat illegal covert animal rescue as civil disobedience. If animals have rights like the right not to be unjustly imprisoned and mistreated, then it does not make sense that an instance of animal rescue (...) will be justifiable only if it meets criteria for justified civil disobedience, e.g., the requirement that the civil disobedient not rescue more animals than would be necessary to communicate their message. Thus, the framework of subrevolution is a more apt way to analyze animal rescue. (shrink)

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the environment)—we (...) argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Trust in our legal and political institutions has been eroding for decades. Civil disobedience as, variously, a form of resistance; as a means of promoting social change; or as a public statement, is likely to take on greater prominence under such circumstances. -/- This Article first addresses the most important, and evidently unresolvable, questions of the definition and justification of civil disobedience. These questions focus on, respectively, openness or publicity; the role of violence; acceptance of legal punishment; ‘direct’ versus ‘indirect’ (...) civil disobedience; civil disobedience as a moral right or as a moral duty; and the relations between civil disobedience and the democratic rule of law. -/- However we attempt to resolve any of these questions, we should, more crucially, consider other ways in which civil disobedience cases might be judicially tried. Our culture of mutual alienation and distrust undersupplies opportunities for sustained, meaningful dialogue on complex issues of public policy. Civil disobedience trials should be reconceived and restructured precisely to encourage such dialogue, to the typical benefit of civilly disobedient actors, policy-enforcing governments, and the broader public. (shrink)