Principled Disobedience

Abstract

Chapter 1 surveys the literature on civil disobedience and places the author’s own approach to resistance and principled disobedience within this context. Public understanding of civil disobedience is the product of two different strands: the broadly Rawlsian philosophical conception of civil disobedience and the official narrative of the civil rights movement in the United States. This chapter calls upon history to show how the standard, broadly Rawlsian conception of civil disobedience (though not necessarily Rawls’s own) rests on an unrealistic and objectionable reading of the African American civil rights struggle. It also argues that the official reading of the civil rights movement functions as a counter-resistance ideology, deterring any form of protest against the status quo. It then examines and critiques recent “inclusive” accounts of civil disobedience, proposing instead a broad matrix of resistance that includes lawful acts of resistance and principled—civil and uncivil—disobedience.