It has been argued that the term "civil disobedience" has always suffered from ambiguity and in modern times, become utterly debased. [13] Zaghloul Pasha, considered the mastermind behind this massive civil disobedience, was a native middle-class, Azhar graduate, political activist, judge, parliamentary and ex-cabinet minister whose leadership brought Christian and Muslim communities together as well as women into the massive protests. An example would be WBAI's broadcasting the track "Filthy Words" from a George Carlin comedy album, which eventually led to the 1978 Supreme Court case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Ein Staatsbürger, der diesen Normen unterworfen ist, kann sie entweder akzeptieren oder teilweise oder komplett ablehnen. Thoreau admits that government may express the will of the majority but it may also express nothing more than the will of elite politicians. It is an act that says “we are deliberately breaking an unjust law.” We often talk about it as a problem. "[30] By this definition, civil disobedience could be traced back to the Book of Exodus, where Shiphrah and Puah refused a direct order of Pharaoh but misrepresented how they did it. Otherwise you are just throwing a tantrum. [64] Michael Bayles argues that if a person violates a law to create a test case as to the constitutionality of a law, and then wins his case, then that act did not constitute civil disobedience. Under the imperative of setting a moral example, leaders of civil disobedience insist that the illegal actions be nonviolent. According to Ashton Nichols, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest. The moral justifiability of civil disobedience is of special interest where the laws an actor violates are those of a legitimate state. But that is different than the notion that they must go to jail as part of a rule connected with civil disobedience. It informs them that unjust actions will be opposed and the … Ziviler Ungehorsam kann nur im Rahmen einer staatlichen Einheit geübt werden. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. [25], In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls described civil disobedience as "a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about change in the law or policies of the government".[26]. The principle of civil disobedience has achieved some standing in international law through the war crime trials at Nürnberg, Germany, after World War II, which affirmed the principle that individuals may, under certain circumstances, be held accountable for failure to break the laws of their country. A variety of criticisms have been directed against the philosophy and practice of civil disobedience. Like Alice in Wonderland, he often finds that specific terminology has no more (or no less) meaning than the individual orator intends it to have. I therefore adopted the phrase "Civil Resistance.". [51] It has also been argued that either choice is compatible with the spirit of civil disobedience. Along with his companions of Wafd Party, who have achieved an independence of Egypt and a first constitution in 1923. The same principle, she argues, applies to breaches of law in protest against international organizations and foreign governments. Over the years, this has been made more difficult by court decisions such as Sparf v. United States, which held that the judge need not inform jurors of their nullification prerogative, and United States v. Dougherty, which held that the judge need not allow defendants to openly seek jury nullification. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War. …are recognized by advocates of civil disobedience; their propagandists would contend that sloganeering and reasoned persuasion must be accompanied by sit-ins and other overt acts of passive resistance; they aim for a new climate of social pressure.…, …injustice through the tactic of civil disobedience. Before Thoreau's imprisonment, when a confused taxman had wondered aloud about how to handle his refusal to pay, Thoreau had advised, "Resign." [citation needed][original research?] This assumes that common morality does not have a prohibition on deceit in such situations. Others advocate falling limp or resisting arrest, especially when it will hinder the police from effectively responding to a mass protest. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay "Resistance to Civil Government" was eventually renamed "Essay on Civil Disobedience". It is generally agreed within the legal community,[49] and is often believed within the activist community, that a suspect's talking to criminal investigators can serve no useful purpose, and may be harmful. [14] In South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American civil rights movement, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004 Orange Revolution[15] in Ukraine, among other various movements worldwide. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. Civil disobedience is an act of refusal by a large group of people against certain laws. In reviewing the voluminous literature on the subject, the student of civil disobedience rapidly finds himself surrounded by a maze of semantical problems and grammatical niceties. Particularly in America, where we have Thoreau, who refused to pay a poll tax, because the money supported the Mexican War and the Fugitive Slave Law. This page was last edited on 30 December 2020, at 15:04. For the act of disobeying one's superior, see. civil disobedience Bedeutung, Definition civil disobedience: 1. the act by a group of people of refusing to obey laws or pay taxes, as a peaceful way of…. [56] In some mass arrest situations, the activists decide to use solidarity tactics to secure the same plea bargain for everyone. ACT UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, "Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Civil disobedience current events provide hope that there is still room for nonviolent opposition in today’s complex world. Civil Disobedience. [32] It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedient's use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. [38][42], The earliest recorded incidents of collective civil disobedience took place during the Roman Empire[citation needed]. The individual is the final judge of right and wrong. Brownlee notes that "although civil disobedients are constrained in their use of coercion by their conscientious aim to engage in moral dialogue, nevertheless they may find it necessary to employ limited coercion to get their issue onto the table. [58] Some of the other allocution speeches given by the protesters complained about mistreatment from government officials. "[34] In his best-selling Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order,[35] Howard Zinn takes a similar position; Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally non-violent, in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent world to a non-violent one, the choice of means will almost never be pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction between violence and non-violence does not suffice as a guide ... the very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections of the world we are trying to change. Threatening government officials is another classic way of expressing defiance toward the government and unwillingness to stand for its policies. [54], When the Committee for Non-Violent Action sponsored a protest in August 1957, at the Camp Mercury nuclear test site near Las Vegas, Nevada, 13 of the protesters attempted to enter the test site knowing that they faced arrest. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Corrections? Home Civil Disobedience Q & A What is Civil Disobedience? "[72], Along with giving the offender his just deserts, achieving crime control via incapacitation and deterrence is a major goal of criminal punishment. Civil disobedience is a nonviolent way to try to change laws. It is a matter for the state (including the judges) to decide on utilitarian grounds whether to do so or not. Even a good form of government is "liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it." "[57], Some civil disobedience defendants choose to make a defiant speech, or a speech explaining their actions, in allocution. Mere dissent, protest, or disobedience of the law does not qualify. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. I feel I have done no wrong. A symbolic, non-violent violation of the law, done deliberately in protest against some form of perceived injustice. The arrested persons were found guilty nevertheless and given suspended sentences, conditional on their not reentering the test site grounds. People who practice civil disobedience knowingly break a law that they feel is unjust. In cases where the criminalized behaviour is pure speech, civil disobedience can consist simply of engaging in the forbidden speech. When practicing civil disobedience, the masses taking part generally resist against a particular governmental action, decision, policy, or even refuse to accept an international power taking control, as was observed in the case of India and the Indian Freedom Struggle. More than this, since only individuals act, only individuals can act unjustly. Marshall Cohen notes, "It has been used to describe everything from bringing a test-case in the federal courts to taking aim at a federal official. Then, there’s Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Civil disobedience is usually defined as pertaining to a citizen's relation to the state and its laws, as distinguished from a constitutional impasse, in which two public agencies, especially two equally sovereign branches of government, conflict. 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,[23] though sometimes violence has been known to occur. This was then adopted by other native peoples who objected to British occupation from 1920 and on. However, some civil disobedients have nonetheless found it hard to resist responding to investigators' questions, sometimes due to a lack of understanding of the legal ramifications, or due to a fear of seeming rude. Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have rebelled against what they deem to be unfair laws. [21], In a letter to P. K. Rao, dated September 10, 1935, Gandhi disputes that his idea of civil disobedience was derived from the writings of Thoreau:[22], The statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. [40] Some civil disobedients, such as the proprietors of illegal medical cannabis dispensaries and Voice in the Wilderness, which brought medicine to Iraq without the permission of the US government, directly achieve a desired social goal (such as the provision of medication to the sick) while openly breaking the law. Civil Disobedience and Political Legitimacy. Civil disobedience is the active, non-violent refusal to accept the dictates of governments. An important decision for civil disobedients is whether or not to plead guilty. Pro Public and typically peaceful resistance to political power would remain an integral tactic in modern American minority rights politics. [70] Likewise, when Carter Wentworth was charged for his role in the Clamshell Alliance's 1977 illegal occupation of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, the judge instructed the jury to disregard his competing harms defence, and he was found guilty. Mahatma Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court, "I am here to ... submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The term ‘civil disobedience’ was coined by Henry DavidThoreau in his 1848 essay to describe his refusal to pay the state polltax implemented by the American government to prosecute a war in Mexicoand to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. [36], Zinn rejects any "easy and righteous dismissal of violence", noting that Thoreau, the popularizer of the term civil disobedience, approved of the armed insurrection of John Brown. [68] The necessity defence has sometimes been used as a shadow defence by civil disobedients to deny guilt without denouncing their politically motivated acts, and to present their political beliefs in the courtroom. Civil disobedience is generally understood to be nonviolent, although some … How to use civil disobedience in a sentence. [43][page needed] There have also been many instances of solitary civil disobedience, such as that committed by Thoreau, but these sometimes go unnoticed. “Civil Resistance is a type of political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods.