Outing Courtesy: The Role of Rude Dissent in Rule of Law Systems

Abstract

This essay critically examines Keith Bybee's All Judges Are Political, Except When They Are Not. Although Bybee's creative use of the cultural form of courtesy helps us better understand the consensus‐building and legitimating features of rule‐of‐law systems, it overlooks the role that rude dissent can play in exposing the violent, exclusionary, and materially disadvantaging aspects of such systems. Using examples of outing closeted public figures and the rude AIDS activism of the 1990s, this essay explores the rule of law from the perspective of those who are subject to it.

“Rude and in Defiance of Authority”: Arizona Anti-Mexican American Studies Legislation and the Discursive Positioning of the “Rude” Student of Color

“…The powerful have long used allegations of incivility to shield themselves from critique, maintain power structures, and inscribe certain voices and bodies as (in)appropriate in certain spaces (Bybee, 2016; Westacott, 2012), leading to some voices being effectively excluded from decision-making processes. As Zerilli (2014: 16) writes, “the practice of civility itself has often-times worked to mask relations of power in a thin veneer of politeness.” Civility may further “conceal the violence that underlies it, leading the materially disadvantaged to be blamed when violence visibly erupts” (Burgess, 2013: 209). Bybee (2016) discusses the charge of incivility leveled at social movements including Anti-Federalists, abolitionists, civil rights activists, feminists, Black Lives Matter, and anti-war activists.…”

Introduction to Symposium on Keith J. Bybee's All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not

“…Burgess (Burgess 2013, 206) also embraces the move to viewing law through the cultural form of courtesy, but ups the ante. Exploring and exposing “the unpleasant underbelly of courtesy and the rule of law,” Burgess turns Bybee's analysis inside “out” by underscoring how courtesy and law materially disadvantage those defined as deviant.…”