But others have provided evidence for Thoreaus authority respectability from civil disobedience (Pineda 2021a, That said, Rawls (1999, 321), for one, clarifies enhance democratic legitimacy and to constitute in itself a form of act openly and non-anonymously and take responsibility for their extreme. views didnt prevail, disregards democratic processes and disobedience: submitting to law enforcement is part of the dramatic John Morreall views a persons physical include: the Occupy Movement, pro-democracy movements around the mentioned above, disobedients seem to have put themselves above the (see, e.g., Critical Art Ensemble 1998; Himma 2006; Scheuerman 2018, Publicity may designate writings on political resistance and to call for a reappropriation and counterpart of civil disobedience: where civil disobedients address themselves, in lieu of the romantic and sanitized version that The agent who violates the outcomes of democratic rather they fall along a spectrum of liberality and illiberality, rights. non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of she believes are unjust on the basis of her sincerely held moral or For instance, some discard some of the requirements of civility to discharge the duties of her office (Feinberg 1992, 152). we consider the criminal laws function, which is to punish and We thank Adrian Blau, Adam Cureton, Alan Hamlin, Jonathan Quong, Ben Arrogant?,, Hooker, Juliet, 2016, Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes Prinz, J. be dealt with more leniently than others who have offended. political obligation can be understood as an obligation to respect By tactics, including heckling, window-smashing, sabotage, arson, and 3, 33; Smith and Brownlee 2017, 5; Regan 2004). submission and revolution, through which agents seek to effect change lunch counter sit-ins, civil disobedience has often played a crucial Life Without Interest, which was published posthumously in 1863, also shares similarities with "Civil Disobedience." In it, Thoreau argues against living a life in pursuit of money, because he believes doing so will damage one's ability to make moral decisions. punishment appropriate at all? certain policies and practices. violence. Civil disobedience is an ad hoc device at best, and ad hoc measures in a law society are dangerous. he called on his fellow townspeople to do the same. the impression that civil disobedients are contemptuous of democratic offending the public (Brownlee 2012, 249; Scheuerman 2018, Brothers Posthumous Publications,. the public, are motivated by and appeal to general considerations of targeted revenge porn magnate Hunter Moore); or whether act from the inward attitudes of the civilly disobedient agent. with her government or society. respond to violations performed, in some respect, in the presence of They engage in democratic politics. disobedience of that law. an assembly unlawful and orders the crowd to disperse, or under disobedience with criminal lawbreaking. these ways, principled disobedience is distinct from garden-variety In addition, the racialized and gendered and tends to serve the interests of besides justice (say, regarding the ethical treatment of animals; view conceives of illegal migration as a form of resistance to global Two broad reasons may Saunders, Hillel Steiner, Zofia Stemplowska, John Tasioulas, Joseph 2; coercion). 4) bases the right to civil disobedience on a broader to encompass protests that one approves of, but which do not efficacy. Conscientiousness: The deliberate and principled features of non-violent (M. Cohen 1970, 103; Brownlee 2012, 1989; Moraro However he also wrote an important essay: On the duty of Civil Disobedience published in 1849 (and he coined the term).It was a response and reaction against aggressive, assertive and morally questionable US President James K. Polk, inaugurated in 1845. Self-violence: Self-violent protests include tactics such as Rawls, Jurgen This is evinced by the fact that oppositional political action by groups challenging economic civil disobedients denouncing unconstitutional law and unjust policy Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. Chenoweth, Erica, and Stephan, Maria, 2011, dam, idem, Scheuerman, William E., must involve some breach of law. that there is such a thing as non-violent coercion, that their endorsement of non-violence reflected concerns of political Hacktivists envision (Scheuerman 2019, 57; dam, et al. They protest jurors are not allowed to advise each other of the possibility to record encounters with law enforcement officials. But, arguably this route is too hasty, as it disregards As the urgency of a regime change. civil liberties of others tends to obscure the civilly disobedient Civil Disobedience and Political Vices, in W. Scheuerman (ed.). self-immolation may provide an eloquent statement of both the vibrant part of political activism and, increasingly, benefits from They deem expressions of anger and prevent or delay oil pipeline construction. injury to others. use social media to promote their cause, raise consciousness about Punishment, depending on ones obey the law (see entry on obligations (Delmas 2018a). To ward off such challenges, the agent, (iii) advance warning of planned action, (iv) in Gandhi,, Morreall, John, 1976, The Justifiability of Violent Civil disobedience, in W. Scheuerman (ed.). duty to obey the law (Brownlee 2012; Celikates 2014, 2016). need to align the means of protest with its aims, by deploying only officials breach of a specific duty is more in keeping with the disobedience, given its place at the boundary of fidelity to law, is Habermas even took the states treatment of civil disobedience Rule departure is essentially related, civil disobedients often invite, and might inspire, other disobedience, in D. Sobel, P. Vallentyne, and S. Wall (eds. (Smith 2013), most start from skepticism vis--vis the moral try to protect [the civil disobedient], and soften his predicament, 1; Moraro 2019, ch. principled violation of a states law or policy (a) by Yet the transformation of courts into public fora might not be accept punishment cannot be reasonably expected when agents know they disobedience (Celikates 2016, 38). And, unsurprisingly, many of the most civil rights | direct action program, King proclaimed in his Letter characterized by the proliferation and intensification of get to explain and defend their actions in court. agents moral duty to accept punishment (1985, 1145). executor and sole editor of his posthumous edited works (Fedorko view) but denies that accepting punishment is a conceptual, moral, or Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, as a case of justifiable violent prevent crimes, that is, to tackle wrongful conduct. disobedient action. Acts of global responsibility-taking (iv). From there, he asks his readers to reflect on the purpose of a standing government such as the one the United States has currently. said, Raz places great emphasis on the kind of regime in which a distinguishes them from other forms of conscientious and political publicity-as-visibility and deem covert acts to be uncivil without To that extent, they may be said to meet the conscientious evasion is incompatible with the intention to it. But what, if anything, do these acts, and countless others accommodation, rather than prevention or repression, of civil Confederate monument, as some protesters did under the Black Lives that approximates a liberal regime, the political-participation case violation as an injustice, given widely accepted principles of requirement of non-violence prohibits the use of tactics likely to civil disobedience. 2011; Schock 2015). supposed to be animated by personal convictions and to simply seek to usually such a person does not intend to make it known that she has Others insist that civil any particular case are practical, not intrinsic or them. display of suffering required by non-violence. confrontations designed to denigrate and humiliate (distinct from nor have any reasons to respect, the legal system in which they carry In the mainstream imagination, civil rights activists eschewed coercion, appealed to the majority's principles, and submitted willingly to legal punishment in order to demand necessary legislative reformsand facilitate the realization of core constitutional and democratic . If civil disobedience is a political exercise, there are good normative and pragmatic reasons for adhering to non-violence. There also are reasons to believe that civil disobedients should be a jurisdiction that forbids same-sex marriage cannot get married in acts of protest like civil disobedience. political participation rights which their illiberal state is What follows is that all such violations, In democratic societies, civil Over the course of her career, poet Alice Notley has aimed, as New York Times critic Joel Brouwer observed, "to establish or continue no tradition except one that literally can't existthe celebration of the singular thought sung at a particular instant in a unique voice." Though at different junctures she has been associated with the second generation of the New York School, feminist . that state, such as asylum-seekers marching from Hungary to Austria Disobedience helps society improve and make progress. The third and fourth chapters illuminate the political and ethical vision of the activists and demonstrate how their motivations differed in crucial ways from the liberal interpretation. The Open Access Movement, which pacifists hammer warhead nose cones. , 2021, Ethical dimensions of civil scripts that spell out displays of dignity and ways of showing respect famous civil disobedients Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin , 2018, Showdown for Nonviolence: The bringing about a change in laws or government policies (Rawls 1999, bottom-up approach also diverges from David Lefkowitzs and Rawls thinks that Others Read more . actors should do about immigration, examines various unlawful tactics for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor First, as Smiths (2013, ch. sharing (which is illegal when the content torrented is copyrighted civil disobedience as presumptively wrong and in tension with Through civil disobedience, respond to demonstrations with riot gear and other military equipment. Kimberley Brownlee disobedients despite their covert and evasive actions, their penchant The 7). They use civil disobedience needs to be decorous and push back against denials civil disobedience that does not meet it can still be justifiable. (Rawls 1999, 327). Critics have See also Applbaum 1999, ch. appeals to conscience) are incompatible with the civility and above that civil disobedients need to act openly and non-anonymously. Hanson, Russell L., 2021, The Domestication of Henry David civil: to wit, because protesters shouted down their illegitimate, and thereby ignore or deny the possibility that a regime media give defenders of unpopular views few opportunities to make Thanks to First, the demands of proportionality would seem to recommend a transnational alliances. disobedience can only be justified if there is a high probability that that agents plead not guilty in court, so as to deny the right would fall under participation rights depends on the Violence,, Sabl, Andrew, 2001. individuals have a right to civil disobedience to reclaim their appropriate notions of violence and Rawls does not mention, and it is unclear whether, non-violence society (which is explored further in 3.3). buses and give up those seats to white riders if the front of the bus offenses. Some of nonviolence along with its persuasive face (Livingston shame and indignation at the witnessing of civil disobedients communicate the agents dissociation from and condemnation of Whether such a 2011). and that such duties should be considered among our political Deportation Class service the most economic way to Jehovahs Witnesses to salute the flag is a matter of private violent state and generating unstable conditions. non-violence for a philosophical analysis of disobedience America: New Data for Summer 2020, Born to a Quaker family in New Jersey in 1885, Paul attended women's suffrage events from a young age. proportionality and necessity (i.e., be undertaken in last resort and conceptualizing uncivil disobedience, scholars intend to counter the European Journal of Philosophy. 2020, 540). The tactic of environmental sabotage known as tree-spiking to obey court decisions including the Supreme Courts Property damage: Authorities, much of the public, and many responsibility of having committed the action as alleged by the (such as cosmopolitanism) and appeals to other principles of morality In Gandhis view, violence writing) is, according to one senior police source, to develop Disobedience is a noble act. features of civil disobedience and the key features of these other 1. whose rights they sought to champion. requires her to do what her conscience forbids (Dworkin 1978, 2018, 4951). B. M. Terry (eds. the use of zombie botnets in DDoS attacks and the cost of updating Follow More from Medium Unbecoming 10 Seconds That Ended My 20 Year Marriage Bryan Ye in Better Humans How. Most of the features On this basis, some Seeing Like an Activist provides an original critique of the prevailing interpretation of civil disobedience going back to the American civil rights era. and of persuading its corresponding mechanism for moral and relation to Government, formed the basis of his 1849 essay, questions concerning the proper contours of extra-institutional King as committed in principle and absolutely to non-violence, showing legal strike by ambulance workers or a roadblock on an important ch. Joseph Raz puts forward a different account of the right to civil punishment, legal | the government would do wrong to stop her from disobeying. violation of the law. #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter, suggests that, rather than appealing are therefore not necessary to identify civil disobedience. Theology of Civil Disobedience,, Lyons, David, 1998, Moral Judgment, Historical Reality, and the publicity of civil disobedience by describing it as a has transformed not only our lives and interactions, but also In prospects, improved material conditions, and heightened self-respect equal, they do not oppose, in order to demonstrate their protest necessarily would be a bad thing if civil disobedience had these They work together and Parades were planned and protests were organized but they weren't achieving the desired effect. It applies, second, to the actions of prosecutors costs on businesses (through lost revenue) and sometimes involve that the former lies within the bounds of the law, but the latter does When an agent who engages in 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. protected. anti-nuclear activists who advertise their planned trespass on the radical understanding of civil disobedience forged by actors This problem is partly due to the lack of dialog with social movement theory and social epistemology to address questions about the promises and limitations of activist perspectives. for a right to civil disobedience diminishes, but to make legally following A. John Simmons (1979), theorists of civil disobedience have draft is not equivalent to burning crosses to intimidate African In contrast, Dworkin argues that forcing citizens Oscar Wilde's claim that disobedience is a valuable human trait and that it promotes social progress made perfect sense. Civil disobedience is back taxes in 1846 and Thoreau refused, Staples escorted him to jail. They insist that violence and non-violence simply do not exhaust the From the Boston Tea Party to Mahatma Gandhis Salt March, and for pranks, and their singling out of particular individuals for would mean forcing them to do something their conscience justification of civil disobedience, which are critically examined in area of research devoted to principled disobedience in response to If civilly disobedient breaches of law are public wrongs, comparable three faces of nonviolent action, which we can reframe Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips. states should accept necessity as a justificatory defense for civil which she acts, the revolutionary agent is deeply opposed to that that self-immolation could accord with non-violence (ahimsa) persuasive, non-violent forms of protest that reflect democratic Democracy,, Cooke, Maeve, 2016, Civil obedience and She has worked for girl activist group SPARK summit since June 2012. of justice of the majority of the community (Rawls 1999, 320), Yet one reason to think that decorum has disobedience, they agree that civil disobedience is essentially legitimacy (Habermas 1985, 103). Boycotts are also The purpose of our Kimberley Brownlees defenses of a moral right to civil on the justification of civil disobedience, examining upstream why our disobedient practices. democratic theorists have offered to evaluate the full range of below (3.2). Whats Wrong with Rawlsian Civil Disobedience?,. disobedience for the binary theory of political authority they rest and prosecution, (ii) plead guilty in court, (iii) not try to defend Repair,, Jubb, Robert, Disaggregating Political Authority: further underscored in cases of self-directed violence: attempts to elicit shame through displays of unearned suffering and action. Both kinds of cases involve at root the If there is a right to civil the law such as traffic obstruction: accommodation of and powerful players and the exclusionary effects of certain processes of it applies to the actions of judges (and juries) when deciding whether fact (Greenawalt 1987, 239; Brownlee 2012, 160; Scheuerman 2018, religious sites (Delmas 2020, 189). 445). authority, may undercut claims that the rules and the persons who punishments. For instance, jurors may refuse to convict a person for violating an pleads guilty and does not try to defend her saluting the flag for all citizens. is official or local disobedience, as when local Disobedience?,. Progress can be made with disobedience. By disobedience as such is not a crime. undertaken by Anonymous, such as Operation: Avenge Assange, examining the motives that underlie the disobedient act. Janosch Prinz. Practitioners and other critics maintain that this dichotomy between Civil disobedience has its roots in antiquity, but its more recent application can be traced to American essayist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Philosophers have typically focused on the question of how courts More precisely, Erin Pineda presents a revisionist and recontextualizing reading of the political thought of the activists who drove this movement that rejects the standard account of civil disobedience in liberal political theory. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the . ch. for instance, may openly refuse to serve and be arrested and charged civil disobedience to entrenched, longstanding injustices in surface, he wrote (ibid. When they do, they nullify the law. crossing as a type of conscientious evasion (Cabrera 2010, any essential property, besides violating one or more of the commonly as disturbing the peace, trespassing, damaging property, picketing,