Civil disobedience challenges formally valid laws in the name of higher duty
Evidence
Civil disobedience is an important social fact in American history. Civil disobedience is an open challenge to law, but one based on principle. People who civilly disobey do not deny that they are violating laws that are formally valid. But they feel that the laws are so repulsive morally, or so harmful to society, that the citizen has a higher duty to disobey. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1191
Categorization
- DEFINE: A clean working definition of civil disobedience that distinguishes it from ordinary lawlessness by its principled, open quality.
- XREF: connects to: The Supreme Court rejected religious belief as a defense to criminal polygamy — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1416; Civil disobedience reveals institutional power as contingent and disruptable; Laws stripping religious freedom provoke principled civil disobedience — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 824 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Laws stripping religious freedom provoke principled civil disobedience
#exemplifies(0.92) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 824 - Extra-parliamentary civil disobedience is justified when bourgeois democracy blocks qualitative change
#corroborates(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2672 - Legal systems differ on whether they externalize coercion or presume internal moral restraint
#expands(0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 513 - Severing law from embodied moral tradition makes state force its sole authority
#complicates(0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1155 - Legal systems rest on customary social rules rather than moral foundations
#complicates(0.72) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 56