What is the difference between civil and uncivil disobedience? How can illegal protest be compatible with a democratic regime based on the rule of law? Is Edward Snowden a civil disobedient? This book follows the philosophical debate around these and other issues, showing how the notion of civil disobedience has evolved from a form of passive resistance against injustice, to an active way to engage with the political life of the community. The author presents the (...) major contributions in political and legal philosophy, ranging from John Rawls' seminal account in 1971, to the recent views advanced by Kimberley Brownlee, David Lefkowitz and William Smith. In the last chapter, the author proposes a novel account of civil disobedience, able to meet some of the unresolved challenges. The author argues that, to make sense of civil disobedience, we should expand our conception of political obligation, so to include acts that, despite being illegal, may reveal the agent's civility. (shrink)

Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. However, adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience may lead to a highly problematic theoretical consequence: the debilitation of civil disobedience. This is because, according to the novel analysis I propose, civil disobedience primarily functions as a costly social signal. It (...) is effective by being reliable, reliable by being costly, and costly primarily by being punished. My analysis will highlight a distinctive feature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two paradoxical implications. First, the instability of the moral status of both civil disobedience and its punishment to the extent where the state may be left with no permissible course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience. Second, by refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience, the state may render uncivil disobedience—illegal political activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience—potentially permissible. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to show that mainstream liberal accounts of civil disobedience fail to fully capture the latter’s specific characteristics as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation that is not reducible to an ethical or legal understanding either in terms of individual conscience or of fidelity to the rule of law. In developing this account in more detail, I first define civil disobedience with an aim of spelling out why the standard (...) liberal model, while providing a useful starting point, ultimately leads to an overly constrained, domesticated and sanitized understanding of this complex political practice. Second, I place the political practice of civil disobedience between two opposing poles: symbolic politics and real confrontation. I argue that the irreducible tension between these poles precisely accounts for its politicizing and democratizing potential. Finally, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies, addressing a series of recent challenges made in response to this radically democratic understanding of disobedience. (shrink)

Theorists of political obligation have long devoted special attention to civil disobedience, establishing its pride of place as an object of philosophical analysis, and as one of a short li...

This article responds to William Scheuerman’s analysis of Edward Snowden as someone whose acts fit within John Rawls’ account of civil disobedience understood as a public, non-violent, conscientious breach of law performed with overall fidelity to law and a willingness to accept punishment. It rejects the narrow Rawlsian notion in favour of a broader notion of civil disobedience understood as a constrained, conscientious and communicative breach of law that demonstrates opposition to law or policy and a (...) desire for lasting change. The article shows that, according to Rawls’ unduly narrow conception, Edward Snowden is not a civil disobedient. But, according to the more plausible, broader conception, he is. It then identifies some advantages of the broader conception in contemporary analyses of new forms of disobedience, including globalized disobedience and digital disobedience. (shrink)

Those arguing that conscientious objection in medicine should be declared unethical by professional societies face the following challenge: conscientious objection can function as an important reforming mechanism when it involves health care workers refusing to participate in certain medical interventions deemed standard of care and legally sanctioned but which undermine patients’ rights. In such cases, the argument goes, far from being unethical, conscientious objection may actually be a professional duty. I examine this sort of challenge and ultimately argue that these (...) acts of conscience done in the interest of reforming professional norms or medical regulations are best understood as episodes of civil disobedience rather than episodes of conscientious objection. In contrast to the private, exempting nature of conscientious objection, civil disobedience is a public breach of a norm or law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in governmental policies or professional standards. Consequently, clinicians may have a duty to engage in civil disobedience even while professional societies are right to declare limitations on the ethical appropriateness of conscientious objection. (shrink)

The Internet is used for every conceivable form of communication and it is therefore only natural that it should be used as an infrastructure even for protest and civil disobedience. The technology however brings with it the ability to carry out new forms of protest, in new environments and also involve changed consequences for those involved. This article looks at four criminal activities, which are used as active forms of Internet based protest in use today and analysis these (...) forms in relation to the traditional civil disobedience discourse. The analysis is done by studying four basic criteria (disobedience, civil, non‐violence and justification) found in tradition civil disobedience discourse and observing their applicability in online environments. The purpose of this article is to better understand the political protest activities carried out online and to see whether traditional civil disobedience theory embraces these new forms of political activism. (shrink)

The question of civil disobedience has preoccupied philosophical discourse at least since Thoreau's articulation of disobedience as a form of non-compliance and Rawls' classic definition outlined in the wake of the civil rights and student protest movements of the 1960s. It has become increasingly clear, however, that these classic definitions are being challenged and rethought from a variety of traditions in the wake of contemporary protests. These articles engage with the most recent debates surrounding civil (...) disobedience and conscientious objection, opening up original new paths for thinking about forms of protest. They also reveal disagreements about how to understand civil disobedience and about the place of conscience in political protest, inviting further discussion on these questions and issues. (shrink)

Activities protesting against major polluters who cause climate change may cause damage to private property in the process. This paper investigates the case for a more international general basis of moral justification for such protests. Specific reference is made to the Kingsnorth case, which involved a protest by Greenpeace against coal-powered electricity generation in the UK. An appeal is made to Rawlsian fairness arguments, traditionally employed to support the obligation of citizens to their national governments as opposed to their international (...) duties. The argument made here, however, is that there seem to be sufficient reasons for holding that a stable climate is one of the first truly global public goods that is indispensable to acceptable standards of living everywhere. This would suffice to justify international and intergenerational ‘atmospheric’ political obligations, which in turn may justify protests – even those causing some damage to private property – against the laws and policies that violate the fair terms of cooperation in providing a stable climate. The fairness argument aims also to provide a ground from which Green political theory could integrate accounts of radical forms of citizenship into appeals to state political authority. This leads to justifying acts of civil disobedience on the basis of novel understandings of ‘atmospheric’ citizenship obligations. (shrink)

Civil disobedience is a form of protest in which protestors deliberately violate a law. Classically, they violate the law they are protesting, such as segregation or draft laws, but sometimes they violate other laws which they find unobjectionable, such as trespass or traffic laws. Most activists who perform civil disobedience are scrupulously nonviolent, and willingly accept legal penalties. The purpose of civil disobedience can be to publicize an unjust law or a just cause; to (...) appeal to the conscience of the public; to force negotiation with recalcitrant officials; to "clog the machine" (in Thoreau's phrase) with political prisoners; to get into court where one can challenge the constitutionality of a law; to exculpate oneself, or to put an end to one's personal complicity in the injustice which flows from obedience to unjust law —or some combination of these. While civil disobedience in a broad sense is as old as the Hebrew midwives' defiance of Pharaoh, most of the moral and legal theory surrounding it, as well as most of the instances in the street, have been inspired by Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. In this article we will focus on the moral arguments for and against its use in a democracy. (shrink)

Rawls’s notion of civil disobedience, which still dominates the literature on this subject, comprises at least these three characteristics: it involves breaking the law, is non-violent and public. But implicit in this notion is a certain tension: it shows pessisimism about the proper functioning of the public sphere as earlier normal appeals have failed, but it also displays a certain optimism about its proper functioning as it assumes that civil disobedience may be effective. In my paper (...) I argue that Rawls cannot explain how civil disobedience may be effective as a public appeal for social justice because he does not fully understand what it means for civil disobedience to be public in relation to the public sphere. His analysis would require an additional notion of publicity which, as I argue, is the notion of hermeneutical publicity. From a Bourdieusian perspective I then make a case for the claim that public spheres always suffer from hermeneutic invisibility. This may explain why non-violent appeals for social justice fail as dialogical practices. Finally I suggest how we nevertheless could understand that civil disobedience can be effective as a dialogical practice. (shrink)

This book explores a hitherto unexamined possibility of justifiable disobedience opened up by John Rawls’ Law of Peoples. This is the possibility of disobedience justified by appeal to standards of decency that are shared by peoples who do not otherwise share commitments to the same principles of justice, and whose societies are organized according to very different basic social institutions. Justified by appeal to shared decency standards, disobedience by diverse state and non-state actors indeed challenge injustices in (...) the international system of states. The book considers three case studies: disobedience by the undocumented, disobedient challenges to global economic inequities, and the disobedient disclosure of government secrets. It proposes a substantial analytical redefinition of civil disobedience in a global perspective, identifying the creation of global solidarity relations as its goal. Michael Allen breaks new ground in our understanding of global justice. Traditional views, such as those of Rawls, see justice as a matter of recognizing the moral status of all free and equal person as citizens in a state. Allen argues that this fails to see things from the global perspective. From this perspective disobedience is not merely a matter of social cooperation. Rather, it is a matter of self determination that guarantees the invulnerability of different types of persons and peoples to domination. This makes the disobedience by the undocumented justified, based on the idea that all persons are moral equals, so that all sovereign peoples need to reject dominating forms of social organization for all persons, and not just their own citizens. In an age of mass movements of people, Allen gives us a strong reason to change our practices in treating the undocumented. James Bohman, St Louis University, Danforth Chair in the Humanities This monograph is an important contribution to our thinking on civil disobedience and practices of dissent in a globalized world. This is an era where non-violent social movements have had a significant role in challenging the abuse of power in contexts as diverse, yet interrelated as the Arab Spring protests and the Occupy protests. Moreover, while protests such as these speak to a local political horizon, they also have a global footprint, catalyzing a transnational dialogue about global justice, political strategy and cosmopolitan solidarity. Speaking directly to such complexities, Allen makes a compelling case for a global perspective regarding civil disobedience. Anyone interested in how the dynamics of non-violent protest have shaped and reshaped the landscape for democratic engagement in a globalized world will find this book rewarding and insightful. Vasuki Nesiah, New York University. (shrink)

Until very recently, civil disobedience, being a deliberate infraction of the law which is politically or morally motivated, was logically interpreted by theorists as a practice rooted in the state, since the source of positive law was primarily the State. But in the context of today’s globalization, the diversification of sources of power, the emergence of international laws or rules, or simply the obsoleteness of viewing the government as a juridical model, lead one to question the relevance of (...) resorting to civil disobedience. Indeed, its strategic minimalism, which consists of non-cooperation, passive resistance or non-violence, in addition to its relative acceptance of the State and the legal framework of its discourse, seem to make civil disobedience unable to face the “global challenge” that any emancipatory movement has to confront if it wants to be efficient. This paper thus proposes a new conception of civil disobedience inspired by Nancy Fraser’s theory of “abnormal justice”, so as to take into account the transversal nature of social contestation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Definitions Justification and the Duty to Obey.

In 1992, the Frankfurt scholar Ingeborg Maus launched a polemical attack against then current narratives of democratic protest, objecting to the languages of ‘resistance’ or ‘civil disobedience’ as defensive, servile and insufficiently transformative. This article explores in how far the language of constituent power can be adopted as an alternative justificatory strategy for civil disobedience in transnational protests. In contrast to current approaches that look at states as agents of international civil disobedience-as-constituent power, I (...) suggest we look at political movements. I focus on the example of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 which understands itself as a pan-European movement of civil disobedience, at the same time working towards an articulation and exercise of constituent power among the people of Europe. In the final section, I sharpen the criteria for the invocation of constituent power in transnational protest in distinguishing between its articulation, activation and... (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss three objections against climate activism often voiced in the public, namely that their practices of civil disobedience are ultimately insincere, illegal, and ineffective. The main part of my paper focuses on this last point. This is because this objection points us to a deeper conceptual problem of political protest: if one of the conditions for the success of civil disobedience is that political demands must have been first voiced via democratic channels (...) of opinion-formation, then why should we assume that a re-articulation of these demands in the course of civil disobedience leads to a different result? To answer this question, I propose a phenomenological approach to civil disobedience. Drawing on the protest practices of activist group Act Up, I argue that climate activism can escape the charge of ineffectiveness if it resorts to what I call the “aesthetic rationality of phenomenological demonstration.”. (shrink)

In this article, I assess Jürgen Habermas’s defence of civil disobedience as ’the guardian of legitimacy’ in democratic societies. I suggest that, despite its appeal, the defence as it stands is incomplete. The problem relates to his account of the justification of this mode of protest. Although Habermas wants to defend civil disobedience as a response to inadequacies in deliberative democratic procedures, he does not provide us with a clear and compelling account of these inadequacies. In (...) order to provide such an account, I examine the various ways in which the illegitimate circulation of social power can distort democratic processes. Civil disobedience can be seen as a legitimate response to inequalities in social power, a defence that builds on the strengths of Habermas’s approach while transcending its limitations. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]. (shrink)

Is hactivism the new civil disobedience? I argue that most recent hacktivism isn't, and shouldn't be shoehorned into the category of civil disobedience. I sketch instead a broad matrix of electronic resistance, attentive to the many shapes and goals of hacktivism and I locate five clusters on it, briefly sketching possible dimensions of normative assessment for each: vigilantism, whistleblowing, guerrilla communication, electronic humanitarianism, and electronic civil disobedience.

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)

In Section One the automatic ratification of existing law as immediately self-validating is shown to undermine the very purpose of law - the surpassing of arbitrariness and of Czar-like ukases. In Sections Two and Three there is an attempt to explore the justification or grounding that can be given for the existing laws and civil disobedience, respectively. In both cases, the justification has been given in terms of fundamental human dignity which should never be violated by empirical laws. (...) Only when such a violation does occur can civil disobedience be justified. Therefore, the rationale for, and motivation of, both a legal system and civil disobedience are the same.However, one does not so easily resolve the opposition between the two. For the law itself is proclaimed apodictically, without the reservation that one may with impunity break the law and commit an act of civil disobedience whenever the law violates one's conscience. Otherwise, we do not have a rule of law but instead anarchy. For, as Jesus has said and Abraham Lincoln paraphrased it: “A kingdom divided against itself will not stand.” The law cannot declare that it is legal to break the law without incapacitating itself. The law must punish its violators to be a valid law; without powers of enforcing sanctions against violators the law is no law.However, we must not consider for this reason that those who are responsible for making, interpreting, and enforcing the law and those who are civilly disobedient are working at cross purposes. Both are concerned with justice. The civilly disobedient individual is concerned with improving the existing legal system. He envisions his role as therapeutic rather than destructive. He believes that the ideal of justice is being violated in some way in the existing laws. He therefore makes of himself a martyr, bearing witness to the truth, and hoping thereby to educate and enlighten and to move men of good will - in short, to effect a change in the law.Before an individual who respects the rule of law should be willing to be civilly disobedient he must be convinced of the violation of basic human rights in the law. He also must consider whether civil disobedience is the most effective means of producing the desired change. But beyond the pragmatic consideration of the most effective means to produce the desired end, there is also the question of what is most meaningful and suitable for him personally in living in conformity with the categorical imperative. Discussions of civil disobedience which limit themselves to questions of practical consequences do a great disservice to such actions. For, must we not admire those who resisted Hitler, even though they realized that their actions were futile in terms of changing the law and might even mean their deaths?In a free society, dedicated to the rule of law, all citizens are concerned with justice. Those entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the law obviously must do just that, so that violators of the law have to be punished. However, when legislators and judges notice that some of the most perspicacious and conscientious individuals are openly violating existing laws in the name of a higher law, they should also make a serious reappraisal of their positions, looking to see whether they may not have become morally insensitive or careless. Indeed, the real value of a free society is its flexibility and tolerance of dissent, even that of civil disobedience, which can serve to dramatize forcefully, deep-seated convictions concerning the injustice of certain laws on the books. It is true that fanatics from time immemorial have been willing to sacrifice much in the name of their cause. But whenever one finds that there is an individual who is willing to sacrifice much without the hope of personal advantage and who is also willing to provide arguments in defense of his position, society would do well to listen to his words and actions.Without the constant delving scrutiny and criticism of existing laws, there cannot be true legal responsibility. Therefore, the civilly disobedient individual, who is willing to put his head on the block in order to abrogate unjust laws, is in fact the legally responsible individual par excellence. (shrink)

This chapter examines the tension between the justification and the punishment of civil disobedience, and theorists’ common solutions to it, by focusing on two central questions: first, should the state punish civil disobedience? Second, should the civil disobedient accept punishment? It presents the theoretical lay of the land on each of these questions, with particular attention to American jurisprudence on civil disobedience. The third part takes a step back to ask anew, how should (...) we think about civil disobedience? and uncovers some problematic assumptions behind the common theoretical approach to the “problem” of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Civil disobedience is a form of protest consisting in an act contrary to law, whose aim is to bring about a change in laws or policies deemed unjust. In the traditional Western philosophical debate, civil disobedience was mainly discussed and justified within the boundaries of a democratic regime. John Rawls’ theory of civil disobedience is explicitly based on this liberal assumption. He conceptualises civil disobedience as a public, nonviolent, conscientious and political breach (...) of the law, only appropriate to nearly just societies, hence to democratic regimes. This article intends to question Rawls’ premise by considering civil disobedience from a different perspective: when it is undertaken outside of a nearly just framework, precisely in not fully democratic contexts, such as the so-called “anocracies”, regimes that mix democratic and autocratic traits. The emblematic case of Sudan’s most recent actions of civil disobedience is examined to argue that, contrary to the liberal conceptualisation, civil disobedience does have a role and appropriateness in frameworks of this kind, where the aim is not only to oppose unjust laws or policies, but also to achieve a broader structural change through rigorously nonviolent forms of political action. (shrink)

The article argues that civil disobedience must be perceived as an action with progressive and political significance, thus reflecting, from a Kantian perspective, the recognizable paradox between morality and law, as expressed in Kant’s moral and political writings. Hence, this article firstly analyzes on which grounds Kant claims rebellion to be unjust. Secondly, it examines how and if people, from a Kantian point of view, can defend themselves against an unjust sovereignty. On this basis, it argues that ‘ (...) class='Hi'>civil disobedience’ can be juxtaposed with the Kantian idea of ‘freedom of the pen,’ thus having the same function as a political corrective. However, two questions are still to be answered, namely if civil disobedience must be punished, and if civil disobedience as a political corrective can be justified? By considering civil disobedience primarily as political agency, both questions are answered in the affirmative. (shrink)

This thesis examines the concept of civil disobedience, and the role the latter can play in a democratic society. It aims to offer a moral justification for civil disobedience that departs from consequentialist or deontological considerations, and focuses instead on virtue ethics. By drawing attention to the notion of civic virtues, the thesis suggests that, under some circumstances, an act of civil disobedience is the very act displaying a virtuous disposition in the citizen who (...) disobeys. Such disposition is interpreted in light of a duty each individual has to respect her fellow citizens as autonomous agents. This grounds, in turn, a moral obligation to respect the law. The central claim of the thesis is that the obligation towards the law is fulfilled not only through acts of obedience but also, under different circumstances, through acts of disobedience. The status of non-violence as a necessary component of civil disobedience is questioned, and it is argued that a degree of force or violence may be permissible in civil disobedience, when it is compatible with the duty to respect others’ autonomy. Subsequently, the thesis offers an analysis of ‘reasonableness’ as a civic virtue, and by comparing three different approaches to the issue of reasonable disagreement among democratic citizens, it defends the deliberative approach as the most suited for treating fellow citizens as autonomous agents. The last two chapters focus on the importance, for an act of civil disobedience, of the agent’s willingness to accept the legal consequences of her law-breaking behaviour. It is argued that a civil disobedient has an obligation to face the prospect of being punished for the breach of the law. However, in considering the behaviour of a virtuous civil disobedient who appears at her criminal trial, it is also claimed that she should plead not guilty and aim to persuade her fellow citizens that she does not deserve to be punished, because what she did does not constitute a criminal wrong. In doing so, this thesis depicts civil disobedience not as a merely permissible form of behaviour, but as a morally praiseworthy conduct within a democratic community. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the conceptual and moral issues raised by illegal actions in health care. The author first identifies several types of illegal action, concentrating on civil disobedience, conscientious objection or refusal, and evasive noncompliance. Then he sketches a framework for the moral justification of these types of illegal action. Finally, he applies the conceptual and normative frameworks to several major cases of illegal action in health care, such as "mercy killing" and some decisions not to (...) treat incompetent patients. Keywords: illegal actions, mercy killing, non-treatment of incompetent patients, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, evasive non-compliance, moral justification and disobedience, dissent in health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The notions of duty and obligation constitute the central focus of Rawls's account of political authority. This chapter examines Rawls's accounts of (1) the justification of political authority; (2) the essential elements of a just constitutional regime; (3) the conditions under which resistance to just institutions is permissible or required; and (4) the conditions under which institutions cease to deserve fidelity and obedience. It commences with Rawls's accounts of duty and obligation, focusing on his accounts of (1) the duties and (...) obligation of citizens; and (2) the duty to obey unjust laws. Rawls discusses two instances in which certain forms of resistance are justifiable: civil disobedience; and conscientious refusal. Rawls's account continues to be oriented by the underlying notion that the legitimate exercise of coercive political power must be justifiable on terms that persons subject to that power can affirm on due reflection. (shrink)

I outline a new approach to the question of when civil disobedience is legitimate by drawing on insights from the epistocracy literature. I argue that civil disobedience and epistocracy are similar in the sense that they both involve the idea that superior political judgment defeats majority authority, because this can lead to correct, i.e. just, prudent or morally right, political decisions. By reflecting on the question of when superior political judgment defeats majority authority in the epistocracy (...) case, I identify considerations that also apply to the disobedience context. I conclude that disobedience in protest of law X performed by agents who know that X is wrong is legitimate when: 1) it is not reasonably disputable that the civil dissenter knows that X is wrong 2) the adoption of X is a high-stakes political decision and 3) no destabilizing effects ensue. (shrink)

Recent discussions of civil disobedience show the world of scholarship and public affairs in disarray. Not only is there considerable disagreement over how civil disobedience is to be justified, there is hardly less disagreement over what civil disobedience is. Can it be violent, or must it be nonviolent, in intention and in outcome? Can civil disorder be a special case of mass civil disobedience? Must civil disobedience proceed within the (...) framework of the existing politico-legal system or may it be revolutionary in intention? Could it be anarchistic? Should the authorities endeavor to prosecute and punish the civil disobedient as though he were a common criminal? Is disobedience which results in no punishment of the disobedient not civil disobedience after all? Because of disagreements over the answers to these questions, the description of an act as an act of civil disobedience is likely to be ambiguous and controversial not only for the general public and the government but even in some cases for the protesters themselves. Confusion rooted in honest misunderstanding is compounded by bad faith, by basic disagreements over the ideal and the actual relations between the individual and the state, and by obscurity in the facts surrounding the intentions of the protesters and the consequences of their acts. (shrink)

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other (...) related, yet ultimately different, modes of political illegality. The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of... (shrink)

In her book, Conscience and Conviction, Kimberley Brownlee argues that there is nothing undemocratic about the robust, primary right to civil disobedience that she devotes most of her argument to defending. To the contrary, she holds that there is nothing paternalistic about civil disobedients opposing the will of democratic majorities, because, inter alia, democratic majorities cannot claim particular epistemic superiority, and because there are flaws inherent to democratic procedures that civil disobedience addresses. I hold that (...) Brownlee’s arguments fail. In particular, her argument fails because it does not properly construe the nature of the epistemic claim that can be made either by democratic procedures or by civil disobedients, and because it illegitimately conflates the concern about permanent minorities that has been a constant thorn in the side of democratic theorists, with a concern with all outvoted minorities, whether permanent minorities or not. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare the extent of Anglo-American judicial engagement in response to civil disobedience with that of the French judiciary. I begin by examining what the civil disobedient can realistically expect to achieve in a court of law. I shall argue that his priority should be to require the judge, acting as a mouthpiece for the law, to respond to his complaints. To do this, the civil disobedient must be able to deny liability for (...) the offence he has allegedly committed by urging a different interpretation of the law on the basis of an alternative -- but plausible -- reading of constitutional or human rights. If the civil disobedient can do this, he can claim a victory of sorts, even if his claims are ultimately unsuccessful. But legal culture can present a further barrier. Judges have different roles in different jurisdictions and therein lie further difficulties for the French civil disobedient. (shrink)

Civil disobedience raises difficult problems for most of us because we are neither absolute legalists nor absolute individualistic moralists. As it is usually denned, civil disobedience consists in violating some law on the ground that it or some other law or social policy is morally wrong, and the manner of this violation is public, nonviolent, and accepting of the legally prescribed penalty for disobedience. According to the absolute legalist, civil disobedience is never justified, (...) because he holds that every law, no matter how bad or wrong it may be, ought to be obeyed. According to the absolute individualistic moralist, on the other hand, civil disobedience is always justified, because such a moralist gives absolute priority to the demands of the individual's conscience, so that when anyone's conscience tells him some law or policy is morally wrong, that ought to settle the issue of obedience for the person in question. (shrink)

Though all of the principal features of Rawls's definition of civil disobedience are in varying degrees unacceptable, one of these consists of the fertile but unargued suggestion that civil disobedience is a mode of address. The first half of the paper tests this by construing civil disobedience as a vehicle of non?natural meaning (but not necessarily of linguistic non?natural meaning) and so as operating the Gricean mechanism of a hierarchy of intentions and beliefs. This (...) feature is absent from other definitions but is essential if other kinds of conscientious illegality are to be contrasted. In the second half a definition is arrived at through rejections or modifications of the other Rawlsian conditions and by reference to some recent accounts of force and violence. It is hoped that the definition has the double advantage of being broadly congruent with our intuitions and of supplying a theoretical underpinning for what it includes and excludes. (shrink)

Four views concerning environmental disobedience are discussed in this chapter, focusing on the moral justification of lawbreaking on behalf of natural environments. The traditional view suggests that accounts of ordinary civil disobedience understood through the Rawlsian tradition can be extended to capture cases of environmental disobedience. The revisionary view argues that the concept of civil disobedience needs to be revised in order to account for environmental disobedience, ecosabotage in particular. The radical view militates (...) against basic assumptions of civil disobedience to argue that ecosabotage counts as forms of civil disobedience. The envisionary view suggests that environmental disobedience is best understood as a creative performance, a type of beautiful trouble or creative disruption that expresses environmental values that we must use the moral imagination to understand. (shrink)

In this article, we will discuss Civil Disobedience as a tool for non-violent protests. We will analyze the ideas from Thoreau to Kant, including the thoughts of Gandhi and Dworkin, verifying the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of their arguments in the political world. With regard to Dworkin and Gandhi, both inspired by Thoreau's thought, civil disobedience to norms provided a change in the political scenario, capable of effecting a mediation of conflicts through non-violence. Kant's perspective, in (...) turn, presents the hypothesis of peaceful resistance when the norms do not correspond to the proposed expectations, the general rule being the idea of respect and obedience to the law. Finally, to conclude this article, we will highlight the writings of Thoreau, Gandhi, Dworkin, and Kant, to postulate that civil disobedience must be linked to the criteria of non-violence, peace, justice, and legitimacy. (shrink)

"Mothers' Civil Disobedience"In this paper, I consider how the nonviolent civil disobedience of Molly Rush and Cindy Sheehan reflect the inherent ambiguity of mothering in a militaristic society. First, if a mother says nothing and does nothing about the pervasive militarism in society the very lives of her children (as well as other children) are at risk. But, if a mother speaks out against militarism or commits an act of civil disobedience, she risks scorn (...) and imprisonment that can interfere with, or make impossible much of the work of mothering. Second, part of mothering involves raising children to be socially acceptable, but in a militaristic society that which is socially acceptable is morally unacceptable. Rush and Sheehan use their particular context to successfully challenge U.S. militarism through non-violentcivil disobedience. (shrink)

The issues surrounding civil disobedience have been discussed since at least 399 BC and, in the wake of such recent events as the protest at Tiananmen Square, are still of great relevance. By presenting classic and current philosophical reflections on the issues, this book presents all the basic materials needed for a philosophical assessment of the nature and justification of civil disobedience. The pieces included range from classic essays by leading contemporary thinkers such as Rawls, Raz (...) and Singer. Hugo Adam Bedau's introduction sets out the issues and shows how the various authors shed light on each aspect of them. (shrink)

It is still an open question whether or not Civil Disobedience (CD) has to be completely nonviolent. According to Rawls, “any interference with the civil liberties of others tend to obscure the civilly disobedient quality of one's act”. From this Rawls concludes that by no means can CD pose a threath to other individuals' rights. In this paper I challenge Rawls' view, arguing that CD can comprise some degree of violence without losing its “civil” value. However, (...) I specify that violence must not be aimed at seriously injuring, or even killing, other individuals. This would contravene the communicative aspect of CD. The main claim is that what really is important is that the civil disobedients be willing to accept the punishment following their law-breaking behaviour. By doing so, they demonstrate the conscientiousness of their civilly disobedient action. This also shows that they are aiming for future cooperation with the State, and are expecting the State to be sensitive to their concern for the principles of justice. (shrink)

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)