civil disobedience
n.
Refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means.
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Refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means.
The refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
A political act involving disobeying governmental authority on grounds of moral objection, with the aim of promoting a just society. The term was first used by H. D. Thoreau in his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849.
Civil disobedience occurs when someone intentionally and publicly violates certain laws. The law being violated may be the target of one's protest, for example dodging conscription to the army. Alternatively the civil disobedient may have no objection to the law being violated, but may do so as a symbolic act to draw attention to other laws that are deemed unjust, as in the case of sit-ins in public places during the Vietnam War. The civil disobedient differs from a mere criminal primarily in terms of motive, since the ordinary criminal acts out of self-interest, while the civil disobedient violates penal statutes in order to make society more just. Furthermore the civil disobedient objects to the injustice of a particular law or policy, while maintaining fidelity to the system as a whole, therefore unlike the revolutionary the civil disobedient has no desire to overthrow the system entirely.
There are at least three issues that divide scholars on civil disobedience. Should the civil disobedient accept the punishment for breaking the law, or is resistance to the agents of law and order justified? Accepting one's punishment is seen by some as necessary in order to emphasize that civil disobedience is a public act done for the public good, not an excuse to run riot. Those who reject this argument point to the fact that tactical considerations must be taken into account, therefore resisting arrest may be justified if doing so furthers the goal of defeating the unjust law.
Is violence ever justified during acts of civil disobedience? Following Gandhi, it may be argued that non-violence is intrinsic to civil disobedience, although many feel that some form of violence, within limits, is acceptable. The suffragettes for example used violence against property, smashing windows and slashing paintings in art galleries, although they never directed their violence against other people.
Finally, there is the question whether civil disobedience is a right bestowed on all citizens of a just society, or alternatively, as famously argued by Thoreau, whether upholding justice means that we have a duty to engage in acts of civil disobedience.
— Shirin Rai/Vittorio Bufacchi
For more information on civil disobedience, visit Britannica.com.
The political tactic of disobeying a law deliberately, in order to bring about some change. The disobedience should ideally be public, non-violent, and committed by activists willing to face the penalties of the law.
Civil Disobedience denotes the public, and usually nonviolent, defiance of a law that an individual or group believes unjust, and the willingness to bear the consequences of breaking that law. In 1846, to demonstrate opposition to the government's countenance of slavery and its war against Mexico, Henry David Thoreau engaged in civil disobedience by refusing to pay a poll tax. One may interpret Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849) as an explanation of his nonpayment of the tax, an expression of an individual's moral objection to state policies, and as a civic deed undertaken by a concerned citizen acting to reform the state. The essay became popularized posthumously under the title "Civil Disobedience" and influenced abolitionists, suffragists, pacifists, nationalists, and civil rights activists. Some construed civil disobedience to entail nonviolent resistance, while others considered violent actions, such as the abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859), as in accordance with it.
While Thoreau's own civil disobedience stemmed from a sense of individual conscience, subsequent activists used the tactic to mobilize communities and mass movements. Mohandas Gandhi found that Thoreau's notion of civil disobedience resonated with his own campaign against the South African government's racial discrimination. Thoreau's ideas also shaped Gandhi's conception of satyagraha (hold fast to the truth), the strategy of nonviolent resistance to the law deployed to obtain India's independence from Great Britain. Gandhi's ideas, in turn, influenced members of the Congress of Racial Equality, who in the 1940s organized sit-ins to oppose segregation in the Midwest.
Thoreau's and Gandhi's philosophies of civil disobedience inspired the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s strategy of "nonviolent direct action" as a means to end segregation and achieve equality for African Americans. King articulated his justification for the strategy of civil disobedience in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963), addressed to white clergymen who criticized the civil rights activism of King and his followers. King argued that one had a moral responsibility to oppose unjust laws, such as segregation ordinances, as a matter of individual conscience and for the purpose of defying evil, exposing injustices, pursuing the enforcement of a higher government law (specifically, adhering to federal laws over local segregation laws), and inciting onlookers to conscientious action. King charged that inaction constituted immoral compliance with unjust laws, such as Germans' passivity in the face of the Nazi state's persecution of Jews, and alluded to Socrates, early Christians, and Boston Tea Party agitators as historical exemplars of civil disobedience.
The moral and legal questions involved in civil disobedience are difficult and complex. In the United States, most advocates of civil disobedience avowed it to be a strategy for overturning state and local laws and institutions that violated the Constitution and the federal statutes. They claimed to be, in a sense, supporting lawfulness rather than resisting it. During the 1960s and subsequent decades, diverse groups employed tactics of civil disobedience, including the free speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley, Vietnam War protesters, the anti-draft movement, environmentalists, abortion rights supporters and opponents, anti-nuclear activists, and the anti-globalization movement.
Bibliography
Albanese, Catherine L., ed. American Spiritualities: A Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Patterson, Anita Haya. From Emerson to King: Democracy, Race, and the Politics of Protest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Rosenwald, Lawrence A. "The Theory, Practice, and Influence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience." In A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, edited by William E. Cain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
—Donna Alvah
The philosophy behind civil disobedience goes back to classical and biblical sources. Perhaps its most influential exposition can be found in Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849), in which he claims that the individual, who grants the state its power in the first place, must follow the dictates of conscience in opposing unjust laws. Thoreau's work had an enormous impact on Mohandas Gandhi and the techniques that he employed first to gain Indian rights in South Africa and later to win independence for India. Gandhi developed the notion of satyagraha [Sanskrit: holding to truth], acts of civil disobedience marked by Indian tradition and his own high moral standards and sense of self-discipline. Attracting a huge number of followers from the Indian public, Gandhi was able to use the technique as an effective political tool and play a key role in bringing about the British decision to end colonial rule of his homeland. His was one of the few relatively unqualified successes in the history of civil disobedience.
The philosophy and tactics of civil disobedience have been used by Quakers and other religious groups, the British labor movement, suffragists, feminists, adherents of prohibition, pacifists and other war resisters (see conscientious objector), supporters of the disabled, and a wide variety of other dissenters. In the United States, the most outstanding theoretician and practitioner of civil disobedience was civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During the 1950s and 60s he achieved international fame by leading numerous peaceful marches, boycotts, and sit-ins. Like Gandhi, he was jailed several times. The beatings, mass arrests, and even killings of civil-rights demonstrators pledged to nonviolent civil disobedience were important factors in swaying public opinion and in the ultimate passage of new civil-rights legislation (see integration). Civil disobedience in the United States traditionally has been associated with those on the left of the political spectrum, as were most participants in the anti–Vietnam War movement, but toward the end of the 20th cent. the strategy also began to be employed by those on the right, for example, by those involved in confrontational but nonviolent antiabortion activities.
Bibliography
See G. Woodcock, Civil Disobedience (1966); C. Bay and C. C. Walker, Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (1973, repr. 1999); D. R. Weber, ed., Civil Disobedience in America: A Documentary History (1978); J. De Nardo, Power in Numbers (1985); P. Harris, ed., Civil Disobedience (1989); H. A. Bedau, ed. Civil Disobedience in Focus (1991); P. Herngren, Paths of Resistance: the Practice of Civil Disobedience (1993); M. Randle, Civil Disobedience (1994); S. L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed (1998); R. Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics (2000).
The refusal to obey a law for the purpose of demonstrating its unfairness or social undesirability; generally does not apply to violent efforts to oppose laws. 361 F. Supp. 427, 431.
The refusal to obey a law out of a belief that the law is morally wrong.
Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form (known as ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement.
Civil disobedience has been used in nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's social welfare campaigns and campaigns to speed up independence from the British Empire), in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American Civil Rights Movement and in peace movements worldwide.
The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government". The driving idea behind the essay was that of self-reliance, and how one is in morally good standing as long as one can "get off another man's back"; so one doesn't have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it). This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War.
In seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may choose to deliberately break certain laws, such as by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally. Protesters practice this non-violent form of civil disorder with the expectation that they will be arrested, or even attacked or beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack, so that they will do so in a manner that quietly or limply resists without threatening the authorities.
For example, Mahatma Gandhi outlined the following rules:
Gandhi distinguished between his idea of satyagraha and the passive resistance of the west.
Civil disobedience has served as a major tactic of nationalist movements in former colonies in Africa and Asia prior to their gaining independence. Most notably Mahatma Gandhi developed civil disobedience as an anti-colonialist tool. Gandhi said "Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice". Gandhi learned of Civil Disobedience from Thoreau's classic essay, which caused Gandhi to adopt a non-violent approach.
Both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Steve Biko advocated civil disobedience. The result can be seen in such notable events as the 1989 Purple Rain Protest, and the Cape Town Peace March which defied apartheid.
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, a leader of the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s also adopted civil disobedience techniques, and antiwar activists both during and after the Vietnam War have done likewise. Since the 1970s, pro-life or anti-abortion groups have practiced civil disobedience against the U.S. government over the issue of legalized abortion. From the 1970s onward, various groups and organizations such as the Puerto Rican Independence Party, have successfully performed civil disobedience campaigns to stop military war games staged in areas close to civilian populations living in the islands of Culebra and Vieques, Puerto Rico. See, for example, the Navy-Vieques protests.
Many who practice civil disobedience do so out of religious faith, and clergy often participate in or lead actions of civil disobedience. A notable example is Philip Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest who was arrested dozens of times in acts of civil disobedience in antiwar protests. Also, groups like Soulforce, who favor non-discrimination and equal rights for gays and lesbians, have engaged in acts of civil disobedience to change church positions and public policy.
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