Day 3692, Civil disobedience.

Civil Disobedience

From the Boston Tea Party to Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March, and from suffragists’ illegally casting their ballots to whites-only lunch counter sit-ins, civil disobedience has often played a crucial role in bending the proverbial arc of the moral universe toward justice. But what, if anything, do these acts, and countless others which we refer to as civil disobedience have in common? What distinguishes them from other forms of conscientious and political action?

On the most widely accepted account, civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies (Rawls 1999, 320). On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience operate at the boundary of fidelity to law, have general respect for their regime, and are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as evidence of their fidelity to the rule of law. Civil disobedience, given its place at the boundary of fidelity to law, is said on this view to fall between legal protest, on the one hand, and conscientious refusal, uncivil disobedience, militant protest, organized forcible resistance, and revolutionary action, on the other hand.

This picture of civil disobedience, and the broader accounts offered in response, will be examined in the first section of this entry, which considers conceptual issues. The second section contrasts civil disobedience, broadly, with other types of protest. The third focuses on the justification of civil disobedience, examining upstream why civil disobedience needs to be justified, and downstream what is its value and role in society. The fourth examines states’ appropriate responses to civil disobedience.

Read the rest here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/

LeChat

Civil disobedience is a form of nonviolent protest where individuals or groups deliberately break laws or regulations they consider unjust, often to draw attention to a moral or political issue. It’s a powerful tool for social change, rooted in the belief that there’s a higher moral law than the state’s authority.

Key Aspects of Civil Disobedience

Nonviolence: Typically avoids physical aggression, focusing on symbolic or disruptive actions (e.g., sit-ins, strikes, or boycotts).
Publicity: Aims to provoke public debate or expose injustice, often by accepting legal consequences (e.g., arrest).
Moral Justification: Practitioners argue that unjust laws must be challenged, even if it means breaking them. Think of figures like Mahatma Gandhi (Indian independence), Martin Luther King Jr. (U.S. civil rights), or Thoreau (who coined the term in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience”).

Philosophical Foundations

Thoreau: Argued that individuals have a duty to resist unjust governments, even if it means going to jail (e.g., refusing to pay taxes to protest slavery and the Mexican-American War).
King: Inspired by Thoreau and Gandhi, he framed civil disobedience as a way to “dramatize” injustice and appeal to the conscience of the majority.
Rawls: Distinguished between civil disobedience (a public, nonviolent act) and conscientious refusal (private, often religious objection).

Criticisms & Challenges

Legal vs. Moral Authority: Critics argue it undermines the rule of law, while supporters see it as a necessary check on tyranny.
Effectiveness: Depends on public sympathy and media attention—sometimes it backfires or is co-opted.
Violence: Some movements (e.g., suffragettes, climate activists) face debates over where to draw the line between civil disobedience and more radical tactics.

Modern Examples

Climate Protests: Groups like Extinction Rebellion use nonviolent direct action to demand climate policy changes.
Black Lives Matter: Protests against police brutality often involve civil disobedience (e.g., blocking roads).
Digital Activism: Hacktivism (e.g., Anonymous) blurs the line between civil disobedience and illegal activity.

Wikipedia

Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called “civil”. Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Henry David Thoreau’s essay Resistance to Civil Government, first published in 1849 and then published posthumously in 1866 as Civil Disobedience, popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself was practiced long before this work.

Various forms of civil disobedience have been used by prominent activists, such as American women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony in the late 19th century, Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul during the 1910s, and Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s British India as part of his leadership of the Indian independence movement. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and James Bevel’s peaceful nonviolent protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States sometimes contained important aspects of civil disobedience. Although civil disobedience is rarely justifiable in court, King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: “Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law out of all other freedom struggles.”

Read the rest here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience