Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

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)

What is wrong with government whistleblowing and when can it be justified? In my view, ‘government whistleblowing’, i.e., the unauthorized acquisition and disclosure of classified information about the state or government, is a form of ‘political vigilantism’, which involves transgressing the boundaries around state secrets, for the purpose of challenging the allocation or use of power. It may nonetheless be justified when it is suitably constrained and exposes some information that the public ought to know and deliberate about. Government whistleblowing (...) should then be viewed, along the lines of civil disobedience, as a collective cognition- and legitimacy-enhancing device. (shrink)

Since at least the 1970s, one of the stock standard tools in the animal protection movement’s arsenal has been illegal entry into factory farms and animal research facilities. This activity has been followed by the publication of images and footage captured inside those otherwise socially invisible places. This activity presents a conundrum: trespass is illegal and it is an apparent violation of private property rights. In this paper we argue that trespass onto private property can be justified as an act (...) of civil disobedience. We look at one particular type of justification: the use of information gathered through trespass in public policy formation. We then animate this analysis both with an historical overview of the effects of sharing information about animal agriculture, and with a specific case study of trespass undertaken recently. (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)

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)

“One who elects to serve mankind by taking the law into his own hands thereby demonstrates his conviction that his own ability to determine policy is superior to democratic decision making. [Defendants’] professed unselfish motivation, rather than a justification, actually identifies a form of arrogance which organized society cannot tolerate.” Those were the words of Justice Harris L. Hartz at the sentencing hearing of three nuns convicted of trespassing and vandalizing government property to demonstrate against U.S. foreign policy. Citizens engaging (...) in civil disobedience are indeed at times accused of being arrogant because they apparently think their own political judgment is superior to that of the democratic majority. This paper examines and evaluates the claim that dissenters are epistemically arrogant. Contrary to the dominant viewpoint in the literature, I argue that epistemic arrogance involves inflating the epistemic worth of one’s view. Indeed, the most plausible charge against civil dissenters consists of two claims: (A) civil dissenters have a higher degree of rational certainty in P than is warranted, and (B) civil dissenters use a method of expression that requires a higher level of rational certainty than is warranted in the propositions that their political view is right and the injustice they fight is substantial. I argue that civil disobedience does not necessarily involve epistemic arrogance. Whether an act of civil disobedience evinces epistemic arrogance has to be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the extent to which each dissenter lives up to (A) and (B). (shrink)

This paper considers the boundaries of "civility" in civil disobedience, by focusing on an extreme form of protest, namely, bossnapping. The latter involves workers 'kidnapping' their bosses, in order to force them to listen to their grievances. I argue that, notwithstanding its use of force, bossnapping may, under some circumstances, fulfil the requirements of a "civil" act of disobedience.

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)

The purpose of this paper is not to define civil disobedience, but to identify a paradigm case of civil disobedience and the features exemplified in it. After noting the benefits of this methodological approach, the paper proceeds with an examination of two key, interconnected features: conscientiousness and communication. First, a link is made between the conscientious aspect of civil disobedience and moral consistency; a civil disobedient demonstrates a conscientious commitment to certain values through her willingness to condemn, and to dissociate (...) herself from, governmental decisions that violate those values. A parallel is then drawn between the communicative aspect of civil disobedience and the communicative aspect of lawful punishment by the state. Both practices are associated with an aim to demonstrate protest against certain types of conduct and an aim to bring about a change in that conduct. In paradigm situations, a civil disobedient aims to lead policymakers not only to reform existing law, but also to internalise her objections so as to produce a lasting change in the law. Having such aims places some constraints upon the modes of communication that she reasonably may use to achieve these aims. This paper concludes by considering three controversial modes of communication -- coercion, publicity and violence. (shrink)

The article takes up the difficult problem of the so-called disobedience of judges against the background of the experiences of the Polish departure from constitutional democracy in 2015–2020. The special role and responsibility of a judge in the state imposes restrictions on her freedom of opinion in the public sphere. Openly manifesting opposition to government policy, which in the case of an ordinary citizen is only the implementation of human rights and freedoms, may be described as controversial and contrary to (...) applicable ethical regulations. The main thesis of this paper is the assertion that although judges who act as impartial arbitrators in disputes should generally refrain from ostentatiously opposing the actions of political authorities, they are not deprived of the possibility of protest. Also in the exercise of office, and not outside the sphere of their duties, judges should take into account overriding moral values that should be implemented by the legal order, and not the values or declarations guiding the government policies. The integrity of the judge, which prescribes restraint in statements and actions in the public sphere, as well as the care for the dignity of the office held, should not be confused with absolute subordination to the legislature or the executive, even if the judge is obliged to apply the law. The traditional attitude of the members of the judiciary, consisting in focusing only on the application of the law in individual cases and the lack of any political involvement, is being reviewed in the face of the spread of majoritarianism and the law abuse as normal techniques of exercising public authority. The disobedience of judges—although difficult to defend at first sight—may seem to be the only possible way to draw public attention to the corruption of the state system. The ‘disobediant’ judges can even be assigned the role of ‘whistleblowers’, which should help to ease their legal liability or their future rehabilitation. (shrink)

. This paper aims to approach the subject of civil disobedience from the triple perspective of the ethical, the legal, and the political. The novelty of our focus resides in the priority given to the legal aspect of civil disobedience, especially to the possible legal justification of civil disobedience, a perspective that is generally overlooked in analysing the phenomenon. This is where the Achilles heel is to be found, though it may provide unexploited insights into the issue from which significant (...) conclusions can be drawn. (shrink)

Traditionally, acts of civil disobedience are understood as a mechanism by which citizens may express dissatisfaction with a law of their country. That expression will typically be morally motivated, non-violent and aimed at changing their government’s policy, practice or law. Building on existing work, in this paper we explore the limits of one well-received definition of civil disobedience by considering the challenging case of the actions of animal activists at sea. Drawing on original interviews with advocates associated with Sea Shepherd, (...) Greenpeace and Humane Society International we find that even if animal activists are morally motivated and civil, the transnational nature of their activity makes it difficult to assess their intention to bring about a change in law or public policy. This means that a civil disobedience defence may not be available to activists operating across international borders. This raises important questions about the usefulness of the civil disobedience concept within the context of a globalised world. We conclude that while the actions of some anti-whaling activists may not meet definitions of civil disobedience as conventionally understood, this says more about the narrow way in which that concept has been traditionally defined, than it does about the type of activity some anti-whaling activists have undertaken in the Southern Ocean. Finally, we argue that activists wishing to make a stand against whaling may have no choice but to act as global citizens because policy change within a single nation-state is unlikely to lead to the cessation of this inherently transnational activity. (shrink)

In this paper, we determine whether illegal hunting should be construed as a crime of dissent. Using the Nordic countries as a case study where protest-driven, illegal hunting of protected wolves is on the rise, we reconsider the crime using principles of civil disobedience. We invoke the conditions of intentionality, nonevasion, dialogic effort, non-violence and appeal to parameters of reasonable disagreement about justice and situate the Nordic illegal hunting phenomenon at a nexus between conscientious objection, assisted disobedience and everyday resistance. (...) This examination leads us to contend that the crime has heretofore received an inadequate response limited to punishment and deterrence. This contention finds support in the worsening predicaments of illegal hunting following harsh sanctions and stigmatization. Although hunters publicize injustices through their crimes, we find that killing wolves as a means to deliberative ends disqualifies hunters’ dissent as legitimate disobedience, creating an obligation of deliberative uptake on the part of society. Nonetheless, in a critical contribution to the field of criminal justice, we argue that it is instead the conditions of deliberative suboptimality experienced by hunters that create this obligation of uptake. Hence, in order to fulfill this obligation, we contend that the burden falls on regulatory agencies to better articulate the justifications for the policies that coerce hunters. We also advocate creating novel institutions to provide hunters with effective opportunities for contesting wildlife conservation directives. (shrink)