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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, POLITICS AND VIOLENCE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2014
Extract
The tradition of civil disobedience in America seems to be in pretty good health. Recent examples, including the Occupy movement, disruption of the functioning of abortion clinics, and even the release of classified government documents by Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, suggest that it is alive and kicking. Yet a consideration of these examples also re-enforces how fuzzy the edges and undefined the essential core of civil disobedience are. Indeed, a main achievement of Lewis Perry's book under review here is to emphasize that what we now consider the definitive traits of civil disobedience—respect for the law in principle, willingness to accept punishment for violating an unjust law, and a commitment to nonviolence—have rarely all been present when civil disobedience has been engaged in. Perhaps Perry's minimalist description of civil disobedience is the best we can do: “the national heritage of resistance to unjust laws.”
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References
1 Perry, Civil Disobedience, 3.
2 Arendt, Hannah, “Civil Disobedience”, in Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York, 1972), 51–102Google Scholar, 83.
3 Ibid., 85,88.
4 Perry, Civil Disobedience, 33–5.
5 Ibid., 58.
6 Ibid., 23.
7 Ibid., 23
8 Ibid., 23–4.
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