In the popular imagination of civil disobedience, few figures loom as large as Martin Luther King, Jr. His “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is considered essential reading for any student of civil disobedience; it regularly features on high school and college syllabi covering the topic. Whenever new civil disobedience erupts, particularly in the United States, journalists and political commentators routinely reach for King and the familiar refrains contained within the “Letter” in order to interpret (and sometimes scold) rising movements and their tactics.1 Yet, much like the broader reception of King within political philosophy, his centrality to civil disobedience obscures the fact that, until quite recently, his political thought was strikingly marginal to academic philosophizing about civil disobedience. Scholarly debates too often have rested on a combination of what Brandon Terry and Tommie Shelby call “ritual celebration” and “intellectual marginalization” that served to diminish King’s contributions as “derivative of long-standing American ideals.”2 To be sure, King and the “Letter” make regular appearances in theories of civil disobedience from the 1960s onward, as they do in popular discourse.

Contemporary debates on civil disobedience often turn on the question of what’s living and what’s dead in nonviolence. When protestors smash security cameras to hide their identities, hurl tear gas canisters back at police lines, or block highways to urge action from elected officials, they refuse the demand that disobedience be strictly nonviolent. The diversity of tactics embraced by recent protest movements around the globe raises questions about the continuing adequacy of the very idea of nonviolent civil disobedience for conceptualizing dissent. Some scholars have responded with calls for a more minimalist definition of civil disobedience that better encompasses these confrontational tactics.1 Others, such as Candice Delmas in her contribution to this volume, argue for abandoning the concept altogether in favor of theorizing this wider terrain as “uncivil” disobedience.

Commentators from all sides bemoan the loss of civility, seeing it as the glue that keeps divided political societies whole. We have become distrustful and contemptuous of those we don’t see eye to eye with.1 No environment is apparently immune from our “incivility epidemic” (the metaphor of virology is apt, since, researchers found, “catching rudeness is like caching a cold,” namely, contagious2): social media, college classrooms, bedrooms, family gatherings, workplaces, and politics itself are compromised. Online trolls are not the only ones feeding the incivility beast. Political representatives and authority figures exacerbate the problem. In the United States, Rep. Ted Yoho’s vulgar and misogynist comments to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Capitol Hill, Brett Kavanaugh’s angry testimony during his Supreme Court nomination hearing, and, most of all, President Donald Trump’s own divisive and inflammatory rhetoric model a kind of unbridled incivility that coarsens politics and degrades public discourse.

From Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, to the anonymous intelligence official whose revelations about President Trump’s illegal campaign activities in Ukraine helped lead to his impeachment by the House of Representatives, whistleblowers have captivated public attention in the US and elsewhere. Christopher Wylie “blew the whistle” on UK-based Cambridge Analytica, revealing in March 2018 that his former employer had mined Facebook data to manipulate voters. Recent EU-wide attempts to regulate offshore finance have been motivated by the so-called Panama Papers (2015) and Paradise Papers (2017).1 Candice Delmas may be exaggerating somewhat when claiming that “[i]f the twentieth century was the age of civil disobedience, the twenty-first century is shaping up to be the age of whistleblowing.”2 Yet Delmas is right to highlight whistleblowing’s (henceforth, WB) massive global political impact, and the ways in which it increasingly performs functions long standardly associated with civil disobedience (henceforth, CD).

Civil disobedience is transgressive ethical action performed in a political context. It is transgressive because it involves breaking the law; on occasion, it also involves transgression of prevailing norms and entrenched values. My concern in the following is primarily with civil disobedience in the context of modern democracies, be they liberal democratic, neo-republican, or radical democratic ones. The normativity specific to the modern democratic context, structuring and shaping it in its many variants, is defined by a complex interplay of ethical ideas of freedom, equality, and human interconnectedness. By “ethical” I mean the idea and conduct of a good human life in association with other entities, human and non-human. I hold that an ethically good life calls for a reflective attitude by individual humans toward their particular ideas of the good, in which reflection is guided by a concern for ethical truth.1 Its concern for a better society as a precondition for a better life makes civil disobedience a mode of ethical action.

In this chapter I address three questions regarding civil disobedience by states. First, is state civil disobedience (henceforth, SCD) even possible, or do scholars, officials, activists, and members of the general public commit a category error when they apply the concept of civil disobedience to the actions of states? I argue for the former, while acknowledging that SCD differs in certain fundamental respects from more familiar examples of civil disobedience. Second, assuming SCD is possible, what conditions must it satisfy to be morally justifiable? Here I contend that considerations often thought to be relevant to the justifiability of civil disobedience in a domestic context, such as fidelity to the ideal of the rule of law, may frequently fail to be relevant to the justifiability of SCD. Third, are there any plausible examples of states engaging in (morally justifiable) civil disobedience? Though a number of theorists purport to have identified such cases, I argue that their conclusions rest on either a mistaken conception of civil disobedience or a failure to recognize that the illegal conduct in question does not satisfy all of the conditions necessary for an act to count as an instance of (morally justifiable) SCD. I conclude with two observations regarding theoretical reflection on SCD, and some speculation on why we are unlikely to observe any instances of it in the near future.

Democratic theory has undergone a much discussed “deliberative turn” in recent years, according to which “the essence of democracy itself is now widely taken to be deliberation, as opposed to voting, interest aggregation, constitutional rights, or even self-government.”1 Deliberative democrats place mutual respect, epistemic reason-giving, and inclusive dialogue at the center of public life.2 The philosophical study of civil disobedience has simultaneously undergone a notable “communicative turn,” such that theorists increasingly define this form of protest as “a way of engaging in dialogue.”3 The legitimacy of civil disobedience is related to its role as an unconventional but essentially respectful means of conveying oppositional arguments to publics and authorities.

For the last fifteen years or so, an emerging “realist” school of political theory, questioning not only the conclusions of mainstream moral and political philosophy but also, more fundamentally, the questions it asks, has called for a new approach.1 Rather than deducing moral principles from posited moral ideals, realists aspire to draw normative recommendations from reflections on actual political events and institutions, and from judgments regarding which institutions and practices do better at addressing recurrent problems. Stressing the ubiquity of moral disagreement and the permanence of political conflict – politics is a contest among adversaries, not a reasonable conversation among friends – realists see politics not as a quest for rational consensus but as a set of technologies for ensuring order and providing public goods in spite of the lack of such consensus. Rather than political morality being an instance of “applied ethics” in which the same moral principles we use in private life can be urged upon political life, politics, realists insist, embodies its own characteristic values.

The transformative effects of digitalization have not left civil disobedience untouched. On the contrary, civil disobedience today is increasingly interlinked with digital technologies, though individual examples exhibit different degrees of dependency on technology and are constituted by varying types of interactions between humans and machines. Digital actions have become integrated into daily life; it may soon seem unnecessary or even counterintuitive to label them digital at all. For some members of society, the digital becomes an increasingly empty signifier, as human activity in general becomes dependent on technology in unconscious and invisible ways. Despite the ubiquity of computing and human-machine entanglement, political and public discourses linger uneasily between embracing and resisting digitalization. The digital still functions as a placeholder that signifies a less familiar, valid, or even less real type of action.

Nevertheless, the Internet has changed “almost every aspect of politics, and its presence in politics is ubiquitous.”1 Digital forms of activism and protest have been at the forefront of these changes and have played a vital role in the digital rights movement as a whole.

Civil disobedience is a practice of political contestation, of challenging established norms, practices, institutions, and self-understandings that involves deliberately breaking the law while typically stopping short of full-scale revolt in terms of both its ends and its repertoire of actions. It is usually situated between legal protest, on the one hand, and more radical – for example, revolutionary – forms of resistance, on the other. Where exactly the lines are drawn, and, as a result, how radical civil disobedience in fact turns out to be, depends on how the meaning, justification, and role of civil disobedience are understood. As this volume documents, different theoretical paradigms propose rival accounts, ranging from the rather restrictive proposals of mainstream liberal accounts to more expansive positions developed by theorists of radical democracy.1

Why another volume devoted to civil disobedience? Libraries are filled with thick tomes devoted to the topic. Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., canonical figures in the history of civil disobedience, not only inspired countless familiar and not-so-familiar movements but also ignited extensive political and scholarly debate.1 From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, civil disobedience became a fashionable subject for discussion among lawyers, philosophers, political scientists, and many others. Prominent intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt, Ronald Dworkin, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Bertrand Russell, produced significant theoretical statements about it. What possibly remains to be said about something that fascinated so many of the most innovative and influential political thinkers in the last century?

A liberal theory of civil disobedience aims to address the following question: if social institutions are for the most part just, what should a citizen with a sense of justice do when confronted with an unjust law? Liberal theory responds to this question by arguing that moderately unjust legislation remains legitimate – and the duty of citizens to comply with the law remains effective – only as long as the legislation could be accepted by rational persons reflecting under fair conditions on the justice of their institutions. A liberal theory must therefore offer an account of the conditions under which the duty to comply with laws enacted by the legislature of a nearly just democratic ceases to be binding and the forms of lawbreaking or resistance that may be employed once legislation passes this point. More particularly, a liberal theory of disobedience must address two issues.

Most literature on civil disobedience focuses on defining what it is, philosophical or political justifications for its use, or jurisprudential issues surrounding its use. Much less attention is given to its consequences. After briefly considering methodological challenges in assessing consequences, outcomes, or effects of civil disobedience, I address individual, political, and cultural consequences. Individual consequences of civil disobedience are effects on those who engage in civil disobedience, such as sanctioning by the government or experiencing liberating and empowering emotions. Political consequences are effects of civil disobedience on the political environment, such as initiating public deliberation or debate, mobilizing support for a cause, or tangible change in social practices, law, policy, or government.

Youth circus opportunities are part of a global expansion in circus arts practices. Although defined with different nuances in different locations, Youth circus is generally accepted to include any youth participating in learning circus skills for non-professional reasons, including recreation, physical education, and social contexts. Anecdotes describing the transformative and beneficial effects of learning circus abound. Research indicates that the introduction of circus arts to a broad youth population has been shown to increase motor competence, motor confidence, physical literacy, self-determination, and encourage risk assessment. This chapter describes how research describing the benefits from participating in youth circus can be understood within the framework of risky play. When engaging in risky play, youth test their own physical and emotional limits in order to develop strategies that will benefit them when encountering future risks. The opportunity to participate in risky play enables youth to learn to trust themselves and develop awareness of their strengths and weaknesses. Learning circus offers a context for diverse, incremental, and individualized risk-taking, in environments where instructors and equipment provide risk-management. Looking at research results through the lens of risky play contributes to a description of youth circus as an enriching activity.

The opening of Astley’s Amphitheatre on the outskirts of London in 1770 marked the beginning of the modern circus by providing the essential model that would be refined and expanded as it grew into a global form of entertainment during the nineteenth century. Although many components – equestrian feats, acrobatics, performing animals, rope walking – long antedated Astley’s early displays, it was their combination into a singular show staged within a ring of spectators that gave form to what came to be known as the circus. In this chapter Matthew Wittmann examines the origins of the circus in late eighteenth-century London, contextualising its emergence and tracing its dynamic diffusion across Europe and the Americas during the half century that followed.