What is the difference between protest and civil disobedience

Much of these public protests looked chaotic in the moment, particularly when police responded violently with military-grade equipment and wartime tactics, firing tear gas, releasing dogs, and turning power hoses on fellow Americans. But they were part of a concerted campaign of political action that continues today in the form of large mass demonstrations against police violence and racial injustice in many American cities.

Windows have been smashed and stores burglarized as targets of opportunity or outlets for fun, closer in spirit to a sports riot than targeted civil disobedience. And research shows that on a larger scale, vandalism can be very damaging to vulnerable communities, while also creating a counterproductive distraction from real efforts at political action.

To be clear, if a few smashed windows or a looted Target were the price we had to pay for racial equality, it would be one well worth paying.

But this is not the trade-off. Nobody leading real movements for change is suggesting that people engage in indiscriminate acts of destruction. In fact, there are many examples of protesters intervening to stop looters and vandals many of whom are white whom they realize only serve to discredit their work.

Nationwide, protesters are challenging the multiple, interlocking injustices faced by African Americans. Defenders of more aggressive forms of physical force are correct that their approach can also bring about useful change.

But their examples, like the Boston Tea Party, do not capture the current chaos. Some sympathetic voices argue that the current looting and vandalism have a similar political connection to the protests.

They seem to be more focused on chain stores, like Target, or specific cultural icons that represent a system people feel has not served them. The reporting from the ground does not fully support this theory.

The vandalism and looting is not exclusively targeting big-box stores or symbols of transnational capitalism. Instead, journalists are capturing incidents of indiscriminate looting and vandalism being carried out by opportunists from Los Angeles to Washington to Miami to Philadelphia. Local black- and immigrant-owned businesses have been robbed and torched, along with a labor union headquarters and whatever else happens to be nearby.

One could have a separate conversation about things like pulling down the Robert E. Lee statue in Montgomery , Alabama, or attacking the one in Richmond , Virginia. These gestures may or may not be politically effective, but the symbolic meaning of physical assaults on inanimate monuments to white supremacy is very clear.

Even setting police cars on fire is a legible form of political action, albeit a political risky and substantively dangerous one. Smashing windows that just happen to be nearby is not. There is some countervailing evidence suggesting that the Los Angeles riots actually did inspire constructive political change , though Wasow himself argues that they are likely picking up the effect of genuine shock over the events that precipitated the rioting.

The rioting of the s was concentrated in majority-black neighborhoods, and William Collins and Robert Margo find that it meaningfully depressed property values in impacted neighborhoods. One piece of good news about is that, so far, absolutely nothing on the scale of the big s riots has taken place.

The point, though, is that you really are hurting people when you engage in indiscriminate property damage, and the more that happens, the worse things will be. In theory, the division of labor in a protest situation in the United States should be very clear. Police officers are supposed to enforce the law by arresting and deterring criminals while protecting law-abiding citizens.

This is obviously not what has been happening over the past week in the United States. Because the protests target police misconduct, many police officers have been acting as counterprotesters — engaging in further acts of misconduct by beating or gassing peaceful demonstrators and oftentimes seeming to target members of the press.

Some of this seems to come from grassroots cop sentiment, some from police leadership, and some from the president of the United States himself. The police are supposed to protect protesters and prevent looting. When the opposite happens, it raises the suspicion that the police are sending a message. The fact that police can choose to engage in either broad or selective underpolicing is one reason the realities of municipal governance are a bit trickier than people sometimes allow.

Officers in Baltimore appear to have responded to the Freddie Gray protests by staging a years-long de facto police strike that sent the murder rate soaring. This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. John Lewis. This sentiment extends beyond moderates like Bowser and Bottoms and veterans of the s like Lewis. Ilhan Omar has a very different ideological orientation than those mayors and comes from a different tradition than Lewis, but she shares the same perspective that looting and vandalism are antithetical to the causes she is fighting for.

Racial segregation fell in this category, according to Rawls, but not economic inequality. Rawls thinks that appeals to publicly shared principles of constitutional morality per the publicity-as-appeal requirement are more likely to persuade the majority and succeed to bring about reform.

Critics reject this justificatory condition because it arbitrarily excludes both progressive but not widely shared conceptions of justice such as cosmopolitanism and appeals to other principles of morality besides justice say, regarding the ethical treatment of animals; Singer , 86— Scholars also include in the class of justifiable targets private agents such as trade unions, banks, health insurance companies, labs, farm factories, and private universities Walzer , ch.

Cooke Finally, observation of past and present social movements, including the Abolitionist movement, MeToo, and Black Lives Matter, suggests that, rather than appealing to the public principles of political morality, civil disobedients may in fact seek to transform common sense morality.

Last Resort : What grounds the widely accepted requirement that civil disobedience be undertaken as a last resort? How do we know agents have met it? One position is that, in a liberal democracy, citizens should use proper legal channels of political participation to express their grievances Raz ; though Raz grants that individual acts of disobedience can be justified in liberal regimes.

But, since causes defended by a minority are often those most opposed by persons in power, legal channels may be less than wholly effective Rawls , Moreover, it is unclear when a person could claim to have reached a situation of last resort; she could continue to use the same tired legal methods without end. To ward off such challenges, Rawls suggests that, if past actions, including by others, have shown the majority to be immovable or apathetic, then further attempts may reasonably be thought fruitless and the dissenter may be confident her civil disobedience is a last resort , Minority Group Coordination : The coordination requirement is designed to regulate the overall level of dissent Rawls , While there is some merit to this condition, arguably civil disobedience that does not meet it can still be justifiable.

In some cases, there will be no time or opportunity to coordinate with other minorities. In other cases, other minority groups may be unable or unwilling to coordinate. A reason for Rawls to defend this coordination requirement is that often coordination serves a more important concern, namely, the achievement of good consequences. It is often argued that civil disobedience can only be justified if there is a high probability that it will produce positive change, since only such change can justify exposing society to the risks of harm usually associated with civil disobedience — namely, its destabilizing and divisive potential and the risk that it could encourage lawbreaking or escalate into uncivil disobedience.

In response to these challenges, one might question the empirical claims that civil disobedience is divisive and that it has the consequence of leading others to use disobedience to achieve changes in policy.

One might also question whether it necessarily would be a bad thing if civil disobedience had these consequences. Concerning likelihood of success, civil disobedience can seem most justifiable when the situation appears hopeless and when the government refuses to listen to conventional forms of communication.

Additionally, even when general success seems unlikely, civil disobedience might be defended for any reprieve from harm that it brings to victims of a bad law or policy. Tree-hugging, for example, can delay or curtail a clear-cut logging scheme and thereby prolong the protection of an ecosystem.

The justification of civil disobedience further articulates the conditions for its effective role in society. Far from undermining the rule of law or destabilizing society, civil disobedience could strengthen the social and legal order.

Both ideas deem the practice of civil disobedience to be a valuable component of the public political culture of a near-just constitutional democratic society. Deliberative democrats Markovits ; Smith , ch.

Agents engaged in civil disobedience can enhance democratic legitimacy in a number of ways, including by putting a heretofore-neglected issue on the political agenda and raising awareness about its stakes; contributing to and informing democratic deliberation; highlighting the outsize influence of powerful players and the exclusionary effects of certain processes of public deliberation, and working to make the latter more inclusive.

Civil disobedience does not only aim to invigorate democratic sovereignty, but also can constitute a form of democratic empowerment in itself — an exercise of political agency that is especially meaningful for marginalized groups. Through civil disobedience, individuals discover and realize their power.

They work together and forge bonds of solidarity. They engage in democratic politics. Many activists further enact within their movement the norms and values that guide their struggles, for instance through radical inclusion, direct democratic decision-making, aspiration to consensus, and leaderless organizational structures.

Some theorists insist on the need to align the means of protest with its aims, by deploying only persuasive, non-violent forms of protest that reflect democratic ideals Habermas , —4; M. Cooke , while others contend that civil disobedience can be confrontational and coercive without betraying its democratic aims Smith ; Fung , A third approach to the value of civil disobedience, besides the liberal and democratic lenses, comes from the political realist perspective.

Other realists criticize both liberal and deliberative democratic perspectives for their deductive, top-down approach to moral analysis, their quest for rational consensus, and their assumption that people can be persuaded by rational arguments alone Sabl , ; Mantena For her part, Mantena debunks the common understanding of Gandhi and King as committed in principle and absolutely to non-violence, showing that their endorsement of non-violence reflected concerns of political efficacy.

Recent social scientific research has corroborated the effectiveness of non-violence in campaigns of civil resistance, which seek to topple dictatorships or colonial powers Chenoweth and Stephan ; Schock How should the state respond to civil disobedience?

The question of appropriate legal response applies, first, to the actions of law-enforcers when deciding whether and how to intervene in a civilly disobedient action. It applies, second, to the actions of prosecutors when deciding whether to file charges and proceed to trial. Finally, it applies to the actions of judges and juries when deciding whether to convict and for judges how much to punish.

How much punishment is appropriate for civil disobedients? Is punishment appropriate at all? If there is a right to civil disobedience, then, as we saw, it protects people from punishment. Unlike civil wrongs, which are privately brought, criminal wrongs are public wrongs: the polity, not the victim there may not be any , prosecutes the alleged wrongdoer.

If civilly disobedient breaches of law are public wrongs, comparable to or worse than ordinary offenses, then civil disobedients should be punished similarly or more severely than those who commit ordinary offenses.

Kent Greenawalt lays out reasons to hold that civil disobedients deserve the same punishment as others who breach the same laws. First, the demands of proportionality would seem to recommend a uniform application of legal prohibitions.

Since trespass is prohibited, persons who breach trespass laws in protest of either those laws or other laws would seem to be equally liable to persons who breach trespass laws for private purposes. Second, any principle that officials may use to excuse justified illegal acts will result in some failures to punish unjustified acts, for which the purposes of punishment would be more fully served. Even when officials make correct judgments about which acts to excuse, citizens may draw mistaken inferences, and restraints of deterrence and norm acceptance may be weakened for unjustified acts that resemble justified ones Greenawalt , What follows is that all such violations, justified and unjustified, should be treated the same.

There also are reasons to believe that civil disobedients should be dealt with more severely than are others who have offended. First, as mentioned above, disobedients seem to have put themselves above the law in preferring their own moral judgment about a certain issue to that of the democratic decision-making process and the rule of law. Second, the communicative aspect of civil disobedience could be said to aggravate disobedient offenses since their communication usually is attended by much greater publicity than most covert violations are.

This forces legal authorities to concern themselves with the possibility that law-abiding citizens will feel distressed, insecure, and perhaps imposed on, if no action is taken. So, notes Greenawalt, while authorities may quietly let minor breaches pass, failure to respond to violations performed, in some respect, in the presence of authority, may undercut claims that the rules and the persons who administered them deserve respect , —2.

Third, and related, civil disobedients often invite, and might inspire, other citizens to do what they do. Such risk of proliferation of civil disobedience and, further, of its escalation into lawlessness and violence, may support the imposition of more severe punishment for agents engaged in civil disobedience.

However, both the models of civil disobedience presented above, which stress its role and value in liberal democracies, and the arguments for the right to civil disobedience examined below, strongly push for the opposite view that civil disobedients, if punished at all, should be dealt with more leniently than others who have offended. The government can exercise its responsibility of leniency by not prosecuting civil disobedience at all, depending on the balance of reasons, including individual rights, state interests, social costs, and constitutional benefits.

In general, prosecutors should not charge disobedients with the most serious offenses applicable and judges should give them light sentences. Leniency follows from the recognition of the special constitutional status of civil disobedience.

In this view, officials at all levels have the discretion to not sanction civil disobedients, and they should use it. Prosecutors have and should use their discretion not to press charges against civil disobedients in some cases, or to charge them with the least serious offense possible. Dworkin urges judges to engage in an open dialogue with civil disobedients at least those who articulate legal arguments in defense of their actions and dismiss their charges after hearing them, or to use their discretion in sentencing, for instance by accepting guilty pleas or guilty verdicts but imposing trivial punishments.

To the contrary, judges might well systematically decide against civil disobedients, upholding the special interests of the ruling class of which they are part. For Rawls, there is only a moral right to engage in justified civil disobedience.

Dworkin outlines what such a right of conduct might look like, analogizing civil disobedients with Supreme Court justices, who test the constitutional validity of unjust law through direct disobedience of that law. For the latter, Dworkin argues that utilitarian reasons for punishing should be weighed against the fact that the accused acted out of principled convictions, and that the balance should generally favor leniency.

Joseph Raz puts forward a different account of the right to civil disobedience, insisting that this right extends to cases in which people ought not to exercise the right: it is part of the nature and purpose of rights of conduct that they give persons a protected sphere in which to act rightly or wrongly.

To say that there is a right to civil disobedience is to allow the legitimacy of resorting to this form of political action for causes one opposes Raz , By contrast, in a liberal state, the right to political activity is, by hypothesis, adequately protected by law and, hence, the right to political participation cannot ground a right to civil disobedience. A different view of rights holds that when a person appeals to political participation rights to defend her disobedience, she does not necessarily criticize the law for outlawing her action.

Lefkowitz maintains that members of minorities can appreciate that democratic discussions often must be cut short so that decisions may be taken, and those who engage in civil disobedience may view current policy as the best compromise between the need to act and the need to accommodate continued debate. Nonetheless, they also can point out that, with greater resources or further time for debate, their view might have held sway.

Given this possibility, the right to political participation must include a right to continue to contest the result after the votes are counted or the decisions taken. And this right should include suitably constrained civil disobedience because the best conception of political participation rights is one that reduces as much as possible the impact that luck has on the popularity of a view Lefkowitz ; see also Smith , ch.

An alternative response to Raz questions whether the right to civil disobedience must be derived from rights to political participation. Brownlee , ch. Whether such a right would fall under participation rights depends on the expansiveness of the latter rights.

When the right to participate is understood to accommodate only legal protest, then the right conscientiously to object, which commonsensically includes civil disobedience, must be viewed as distinct from political participation rights. A further challenge to a regime-focused account is that real societies do not align with a dichotomy between liberal and illiberal regimes; rather they fall along a spectrum of liberality and illiberality, being both more or less liberal relative to each other and being more or less liberal in some domains than in others.

Philosophers have typically focused on the question of how courts should treat civil disobedients, while neglecting to apply that question to law enforcement. Yet the police have much discretion in how to deal with civil disobedients. In particular, they have no obligation to arrest protesters when they commit minor violations of the law such as traffic obstruction: accommodation of and communication with protesters is something they can but all too rarely decide to do.

Instead, many governments practice militarized repression of protests. Local police departments in the U. Also, the British government sought to strengthen public order laws and secure new police powers to crack down on Extinction Rebellion XR , the global environmental movement whose street protests, die-ins, and roadblocks for climate justice have brought cities to a standstill.

Accommodation requires communication channels between police and activists and involves strategies such as pre-negotiated arrests. While the U. Neither approach respects anything like a right to civil disobedience.

A constitutional government committed to recognizing the right to civil disobedience would also have to reform part of its criminal laws and make available certain defenses.

Brownlee proposes two. Second, states should accept necessity as a justificatory defense for civil disobedience undertaken as a reasonable and parsimonious response to violations of and threats to non-contingent basic needs Brownlee , ch. As these defenses suggest, constitutionally recognizing civil disobedience does not mean making civil disobedience legal.

Disobedients would still be arrested and prosecuted, but they would get to explain and defend their actions in court. They would be heard. Even so, civil disobedience remains an enduring, vibrant part of political activism and, increasingly, benefits from transnational alliances. Theorists have long assumed that civil disobedience only begs justification in liberal, democratic societies — the best real-world candidates for legitimate states. However, civil disobedience also raises questions in undemocratic and illegitimate contexts, regarding its overall role, strategic value, and tactical efficacy.

Yet they still beg significant questions concerning the proper contours of extra-institutional dissident politics and the justification of uncivil and forceful tactics in repressive contexts, including violence against police and the destruction of pro-China shops and Chinese banks. Finally, whereas theorists have tended to think of civil disobedience as generally undertaken to achieve worthy public goals, liberal democratic states have recently witnessed much disobedience in pursuit of anti-democratic and illiberal goals, including conscientious refusal to abide by antidiscrimination statutes and violations of, and protests against, laws requiring the provision of reproductive services and the public health measures enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

We may need a different lens than liberal and democratic theorists have offered to evaluate the full range of conservative social movements, counter-movements, and reactionary movements which resort to civil and other forms of disobedience.

Thanks to Kelsey Vicar for research assistance. Features of Civil Disobedience 1. Other Types of Protest 2. Justification 3. Responding to Civil Disobedience 4. Features of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau is widely credited with coining the term civil disobedience. Other Types of Protest Although civil disobedience often overlaps broadly with other types of dissent, nevertheless some distinctions may be drawn between the key features of civil disobedience and the key features of these other practices.

Justification The task of defending civil disobedience is commonly undertaken with the assumption that in reasonably just, liberal societies people have a general moral duty to follow the law often called political obligation.

Responding to Civil Disobedience How should the state respond to civil disobedience? Bedau, Hugo A. Civil Disobedience in Focus , London: Routledge. Scheuerman ed. Burns and H. Hart eds. Brownlee, Kimberley, Owen ed. Celikates, R. Kreite, and T. Wesche eds. Garner, and S. Ferzan and L. Alexander eds. Schwartzberg ed. Duff, Antony and Garland David eds. Dworkin, Ronald, , Taking Rights Seriously , 5th ed. Fanon, Frantz, [], The Wretched of the Earth , trans.

Philcox, New York: Grove Press. Duff and D. Garland eds. Finlay, Christopher J. Duncan ed. Hanson, Russell L. Torpey, trans. Berkeley Journal of Sociology , 95— Rehg, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hidalgo, Javier S. Himma ed. King Jr. Chaos or Community? Bedau ed. Sobel, P. Vallentyne, and S.

Wall eds. Locke, John, []. Second Treatise of Government , C. Macpherson ed. Shelby and B. Terry eds. Lackey ed. Revised edition. Raz, Joseph, Russell, Bertrand, Autobiography , London: Routledge. Sabl, Andrew, Scheuerman, William E. Shelby, Tommie, and Terry, Brandon M.

Simmons, A. Smart, Brian, Ng and J. Wong eds. Terry, Brandon M. Zerilli, Linda M. Sarat ed. Academic Tools How to cite this entry. Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database. Related Entries civil rights legal obligation and authority legal philosophy punishment, legal Socrates terrorism Thoreau, Henry David.

Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Mirror Sites View this site from another server:. How to cite this entry.