Recent Theories of Civil Disobedience: An Anti‐Legal Turn?

Justifying Resistance to Immigration Law: The Case of Mere Noncompliance

“…While there might be sound strategic reasons for civil disobedients not to announce their intentions in advance-for example, so as not to provide the authorities with an opportunity to preemptively abort the intended breaches of law-civil disobedients must at some point publicize their breach of the law to their co-citizens. 56 Civil disobedience is political since it is a form of contestation: civil disobedients break the law with the aim of persuading their co-citizens to support the reform of unjust laws and policies. 57 Because Hidalgo focuses on personal disobedience to the neglect of civil disobedience in his account of individual citizens' justified noncompliance with unjust secondary immigration laws, he risks obscuring the moral significance of citizens' status as citizens-that is, as equal sharers in their state's authorization and exercise of political power, which in a constitutional democracy is ultimately "the power of free and equal citizens as a collective body."…”

Principled disobedience in the EU

“…Not only may transgressions be hard to avoid, but there is an argument that it is intrinsically desirable that at least some measures be challenged in this way. We may assume that one aim of contestation is to raise critical public attitudes: it may be that open disobedience has a valuable capacity to do this (Scheuerman, , p. 5). If emergency rule relies on securitization, such that exceptional measures are advocated as necessary responses to urgent threats, then disobedience can be seen as a step towards de ‐securitization (Aradau, ) and re‐politicization.…”

Civil Disobedience

“…However, the civilly disobedient agent essentially calls for legal reform, while the conscientious objector simply “refuses to perform an action, provide a service, and so forth, on the grounds that doing so is against her conscience” (Wicclair, : 1). On most accounts, civil disobedience differs from both armed resistance and revolution in attitudes, goals, and methods: civil disobedients are thought to simply seek legal reforms, only resort to nonviolent and public tactics, and demonstrate general respect for the legal system by accepting punishment (Bedau, ; Cohen, ; Rawls, : §55; Singer, : 86; Habermas, ; Sabl, ; Smith, : 2–5; Scheuerman, ). In contrast, armed resistants and revolutionaries are supposed to have radical goals, lack respect for the legal system, and be open to the use of covert, forcible, and violent tactics.…”

“…Another is to argue that even where citizens have a duty to obey the law, they also have a moral right to engage in suitably constrained civil disobedience (Lefkowitz 2007; Brownlee, ; Smith, ). Yet another strategy emphasizes the role of civil disobedience in buttressing the democratic rule of law (Dworkin, ; Scheuerman, ).…”