Cooke , is satisfied when agents aim to communicate with an audience and engage with the public sphere. This anti-legal turn goes along with what we may call a critical turn in scholarship on civil disobedience. Not only do theorists critique the liberal account of civil disobedience as unduly narrow and restrictive as contemporary critics of Rawls already did and articulate a more inclusive concept; but they also critique the ideology that undergirds the common account, uncovering the ways in which it distorts the reality of the practice, deters resistance, and buttresses the status quo Celikates , ; Delmas a, ch.
In this vein, several scholars have reassessed the complex legacy of Thoreau and Gandhi to the civil disobedience tradition, in order to both show the misappropriation of their writings on political resistance and to call for a reappropriation and appreciation of their visions Mantena ; Hanson ; Livingston ; Scheuerman , ch. Scholars have also reconsidered the historical record of the American Civil Rights Movement to excavate the radical understanding of civil disobedience forged by actors themselves, in lieu of the romantic and sanitized version that dominates public perception of the Movement Hooker ; Livingston a, b; Pineda b, ch.
Although civil disobedience often overlaps broadly with other types of dissent, nevertheless some distinctions may be drawn between the key features of civil disobedience and the key features of these other practices. The obvious difference between legal protest and civil disobedience is that the former lies within the bounds of the law, but the latter does not. Legal ways of protesting include, among many others, making speeches, signing petitions, organizing for a cause, donating money, taking part in authorized demonstrations, and boycotting.
Some of these can become illegal, for instance when law enforcement declares an assembly unlawful and orders the crowd to disperse, or under anti-boycott legislation. Some causes may also be declared illegal, such that one cannot be associated with the cause or donate to it such as the Communist Party in the U.
Most of the features exemplified in civil disobedience — other than its illegality — can be found in legal protest: a conscientious and communicative demonstration of protest, a desire to bring about through moral dialogue some lasting change in policy or principle, an attempt to educate and to raise awareness, and so on. A practice distinct from, but related to, civil disobedience is rule departure on the part of authorities. Rule departure is essentially the deliberate decision by an official, for conscientious reasons, not to discharge the duties of her office Feinberg , Civil disobedience and rule departure differ mainly in the identity of their practitioners and in their legality.
First, whereas rule departure typically is done by an agent of the state including citizens serving in juries , civil disobedience typically is done by citizens including officials acting as ordinary citizens and not in the capacity of their official role. Second, whereas the civil disobedient breaks the law, the official who departs from the rules associated with her role is not usually violating the law, unless the rule she breaks is also codified in law.
For instance, jurors may refuse to convict a person for violating an unjust law. When they do, they nullify the law. However, many judges forbid any mention of jury nullification in their courtroom, so that jurors are not allowed to advise each other of the possibility to refuse to convict Brooks Conscientious objection may be defined as a refusal to conform to some rule, mandate, or legal directive on grounds of personal opposition to it. Examples include conscripts refusing to serve in the army; public officials refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses; and parents refusing to vaccinate their children as mandated by state law.
In other views, however, when an objector seeks to keep her act private and to avoid detection, this casts doubt on her sincerity and seriousness Brownlee , ch. Conscientious objection is often considered to be the private counterpart of civil disobedience: where civil disobedients address the public, are motivated by and appeal to general considerations of justice, and seek to bring about reform, conscientious objectors are supposed to be animated by personal convictions and to simply seek to preserve their own moral integrity through exemption Smith and Brownlee Conscientious objection, unlike civil disobedience, is not necessarily unlawful.
Indeed, the law protects conscientious objectors in many contexts, including in the military and healthcare, by carving out exemptions for them. Some thinkers distinguish conscientious objection from conscientious evasion and stress that we should not overstate the private and personal characteristics of the former. Conscientious objectors often act openly and non-anonymously and take responsibility for their non-conforming act by attempting or being willing to justify it to authorities. To that extent, they may be said to meet the publicity-as-visibility requirement.
Some agents, in contrast, undertake their conscientious objection covertly and evasively as conscientious evasion. A young man drafted to fight a war he opposes, for instance, may openly refuse to serve and be arrested and charged for his refusal, or covertly dodge the draft by going AWOL. While conscientious evasion is incompatible with the intention to communicate, conscientious objection may have a public or communicative component, as Thoreau clearly did with his conscientious tax refusal, in a way that blurs the distinction with civil disobedience.
Moreover, when such actions are taken by many people — as they often are — their collective impact can approximate the kind of communicative protest exemplified in civil disobedience Delmas a, ch. Writings on immigration and on civil disobedience have merged into an area of research devoted to principled disobedience in response to anti-immigration policies.
One view, which focuses on what individual actors should do about immigration, examines various unlawful tactics of resistance, including evasion, deception, use of force against state officials, and smuggling Hidalgo , chs. Another view conceives of illegal migration as a form of resistance to global poverty Blunt , ch.
It is further useful to distinguish transnational civil disobedience from global civil disobedience. For instance, when the sans-papiers in France openly protest against their socio-political and legal exclusion through occupations, demonstrations, and hunger strikes, they may be viewed as engaged in acts of global civil disobedience.
See also Applbaum , ch. Digitalization — access to personal computers and the Internet — has transformed not only our lives and interactions, but also our disobedient practices. From piracy to DDoS attacks and from open-access coding to Digital Care Packages which provide tools to circumvent censorship and surveillance , digital disobedience has emerged as a rich terrain for theoretical inquiry.
Scholars disagree about the application of the defining features of civil disobedience to the digital, e. These debates aside, it is useful to distinguish different kinds of digital tools, sites, strategies, and aims. First, activists use digital technology as tools to organize, document, communicate, raise funds, and make decisions.
For instance, Black Lives Matter activists use social media to promote their cause, raise consciousness about systemic racism, and publicize instances of police brutality. They use crowdfunding platforms for fundraising to cover bail and other legal expenses for those arrested. They encourage people to use police scanner apps to watch police activity and legal assistance apps to record encounters with law enforcement officials.
Second, the digital is itself a crucial site and object of activism. Hacktivists envision a different Internet — one that is democratic and democratically controlled, free, respectful of privacy, and creative. They protest against the digital architecture of surveillance and control that has been imposed on netizens without their consent.
Third, some properly digital strategies of principled disobedience have emerged, such as DDoS actions, web defacement, and hacking. The Open Access Movement, which advocates for open-source software and an open-source repository of academic and scientific research, combines all three dimensions of digital disobedience: it uses networked computers to organize and communicate; it seeks to bring about a free Internet characterized by the free flow of software, science, and culture and has developed a coherent political platform in its defense; and it deploys properly digital strategies, such as illegal downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing which is illegal when the content torrented is copyrighted material.
The Open Access Movement epitomizes a public, geeks-and-grassroots mass movement that not only promotes online democratic governance, but also enacts it within the movement Swartz [Other Internet Resources]; Delmas b, 79— Uncivil disobedience is not a distinct category of political action, but a cluster concept or umbrella term that can be used to designate acts of principled disobedience that may or may not be communicative, and which violate one or more of the marks of civility by being covert, violent, evasive, or offensive Delmas a, ; Lai Examples include animal rescue, Sanctuary assistance, sabotage, ecotage e.
These various act-types do not share any essential property, besides violating one or more of the commonly accepted criteria of civility. Each form of uncivil disobedience must be examined conceptualized and assessed on its own. Identifying some principled disobedient acts as uncivil makes room to focus on their justification. Scholars have defended such uncivil disobedience as political rioting Pasternak , vandalism Lim ; Lai , violent protest Kling and Mitchell , coercive strike tactics Gourevitch , and direct action Smith While a civil disobedient does not necessarily oppose the regime in which she acts, the revolutionary agent is deeply opposed to that regime or a core aspect of that regime.
Revolutionary agents may not seek to persuade others of the merits of their position — communication is usually not their primary aim, although they convey the urgency of a regime change. When revolution is called for, such as under colonial occupation, there is no need to justify constrained acts of protest like civil disobedience.
Indeed, more forceful resistance can be justified as we pass into the realm of just war theory Buchanan ; Finlay This is not to say that all violent tactics, including terror, are permissible, since the use of violence must not only pursue a just cause but also accord with proportionality and necessity i.
As will be discussed in the next section, revolutionary activists and thinkers like Frantz Fanon , ch. The task of defending civil disobedience is commonly undertaken with the assumption that in reasonably just, liberal societies people have a general moral duty to follow the law often called political obligation. It is on the basis of such an assumption that civil disobedience requires justification. This section examines common understandings of the problem of disobedience 3.
Whether or not theorists assume that civil disobedience is presumptively impermissible and in need of justification, their analyses also articulate the value and role of civil disobedience in non-ideal, nearly just or less-than-nearly-just liberal democracies 3. Philosophers have given many arguments in favor of the moral duty to obey the law see entry on political obligation.
Despite the many critiques of, and general skepticism toward, arguments for the moral duty to obey the law, most prominently following A. They contend that civil disobedience in particular is presumptively wrong because of its anti-democratic nature. The agent who violates the outcomes of democratic decision-making processes because she disapproves of them puts herself above the law and threatens the legal and democratic order. Recent scholarship on civil disobedience has taken what may be dubbed an anarchist turn , as theorists tend to no longer approach civil disobedience as presumptively wrong and in tension with political obligation.
Others defend a disjunctive moral duty to obey the law or disobey it civilly Lefkowitz ; and still others argue that the grounds commonly used to support political obligation — the natural duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and associative obligations — yield duties to resist injustice, through civil and uncivil disobedience, under non-ideal circumstances, and that such duties should be considered among our political obligations Delmas a.
Likewise, on a virtue-ethical account, political obligation can be understood as an obligation to respect rather than to obey the law, which can sometimes give rise to a duty to engage in civil disobedience Moraro , ch. Given the assumption that people have a moral duty to obey the law and the concern that civil disobedience has the potential to destabilize society, Rawls famously raised the bar for the justified use of the practice, requiring acts of civil disobedience 1 to target serious and long-standing injustice and at the same time appeal to widely accepted principles of justice, 2 to be undertaken as a last resort, and 3 to be done in coordination with other minority groups with similar grievances Rawls , —9.
These conditions for the justification of civil disobedience, which are critically examined in this part, are closely tied not only to the ostensible need to diffuse its destabilizing potential and discourage proliferation of the practice, but also to the efficacy and role of civil disobedience in society which is explored further in 3.
Longstanding Injustice : Why did Rawls restrict the target of civil disobedience to entrenched, longstanding injustices — in particular, violations of the principle of equal basic liberties? Racial segregation fell in this category, according to Rawls, but not economic inequality.
Rawls thinks that appeals to publicly shared principles of constitutional morality per the publicity-as-appeal requirement are more likely to persuade the majority and succeed to bring about reform. Critics reject this justificatory condition because it arbitrarily excludes both progressive but not widely shared conceptions of justice such as cosmopolitanism and appeals to other principles of morality besides justice say, regarding the ethical treatment of animals; Singer , 86— Scholars also include in the class of justifiable targets private agents such as trade unions, banks, health insurance companies, labs, farm factories, and private universities Walzer , ch.
Cooke Finally, observation of past and present social movements, including the Abolitionist movement, MeToo, and Black Lives Matter, suggests that, rather than appealing to the public principles of political morality, civil disobedients may in fact seek to transform common sense morality.
Last Resort : What grounds the widely accepted requirement that civil disobedience be undertaken as a last resort? How do we know agents have met it? One position is that, in a liberal democracy, citizens should use proper legal channels of political participation to express their grievances Raz ; though Raz grants that individual acts of disobedience can be justified in liberal regimes.
But, since causes defended by a minority are often those most opposed by persons in power, legal channels may be less than wholly effective Rawls , Moreover, it is unclear when a person could claim to have reached a situation of last resort; she could continue to use the same tired legal methods without end.
To ward off such challenges, Rawls suggests that, if past actions, including by others, have shown the majority to be immovable or apathetic, then further attempts may reasonably be thought fruitless and the dissenter may be confident her civil disobedience is a last resort , Minority Group Coordination : The coordination requirement is designed to regulate the overall level of dissent Rawls , While there is some merit to this condition, arguably civil disobedience that does not meet it can still be justifiable.
In some cases, there will be no time or opportunity to coordinate with other minorities. In other cases, other minority groups may be unable or unwilling to coordinate. A reason for Rawls to defend this coordination requirement is that often coordination serves a more important concern, namely, the achievement of good consequences.
It is often argued that civil disobedience can only be justified if there is a high probability that it will produce positive change, since only such change can justify exposing society to the risks of harm usually associated with civil disobedience — namely, its destabilizing and divisive potential and the risk that it could encourage lawbreaking or escalate into uncivil disobedience.
In response to these challenges, one might question the empirical claims that civil disobedience is divisive and that it has the consequence of leading others to use disobedience to achieve changes in policy. One might also question whether it necessarily would be a bad thing if civil disobedience had these consequences.
Concerning likelihood of success, civil disobedience can seem most justifiable when the situation appears hopeless and when the government refuses to listen to conventional forms of communication. Additionally, even when general success seems unlikely, civil disobedience might be defended for any reprieve from harm that it brings to victims of a bad law or policy.
Tree-hugging, for example, can delay or curtail a clear-cut logging scheme and thereby prolong the protection of an ecosystem. The justification of civil disobedience further articulates the conditions for its effective role in society. Far from undermining the rule of law or destabilizing society, civil disobedience could strengthen the social and legal order.
Both ideas deem the practice of civil disobedience to be a valuable component of the public political culture of a near-just constitutional democratic society. Deliberative democrats Markovits ; Smith , ch. Agents engaged in civil disobedience can enhance democratic legitimacy in a number of ways, including by putting a heretofore-neglected issue on the political agenda and raising awareness about its stakes; contributing to and informing democratic deliberation; highlighting the outsize influence of powerful players and the exclusionary effects of certain processes of public deliberation, and working to make the latter more inclusive.
Civil disobedience does not only aim to invigorate democratic sovereignty, but also can constitute a form of democratic empowerment in itself — an exercise of political agency that is especially meaningful for marginalized groups. Through civil disobedience, individuals discover and realize their power. They work together and forge bonds of solidarity. They engage in democratic politics. Many activists further enact within their movement the norms and values that guide their struggles, for instance through radical inclusion, direct democratic decision-making, aspiration to consensus, and leaderless organizational structures.
Some theorists insist on the need to align the means of protest with its aims, by deploying only persuasive, non-violent forms of protest that reflect democratic ideals Habermas , —4; M. Cooke , while others contend that civil disobedience can be confrontational and coercive without betraying its democratic aims Smith ; Fung , A third approach to the value of civil disobedience, besides the liberal and democratic lenses, comes from the political realist perspective.
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