It is a liberal truism that to live as a citizen in a society governed by “the rule of law” means both to be ruled by law and to be the ruler of law, at least insofar as submission is the consequence of a quasi-contractual or reciprocal exchange of chaos for order. The architecture of the rule of law ideal is built upon foundations of democratic legitimacy and popular sovereignty and, while the task of its authorship and enforcement may be collectively delegated, the fundamental mandate remains – so the theory goes – within the gift of individual citizens. For decades, however, critical scholars have questioned the legitimacy of this account, highlighting delusions of empowerment and the presence of micro-politics that mediate the relationship between what is authored in the name of citizens and the partial interests this may serve.

The concepts of the rule of law and constitutionalism are clearly interrelated, even though they do not mean the same thing or refer to the same phenomena. Although the two ideas are often equated, according to Ten “constitutionalism usually refers to specific constitutional devices and procedures, such as the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, the independence of the judiciary, due process of fair hearings for those charged with criminal offences, and respect for individual rights, which are partly constitutive of a liberal democratic system of government.” And the rule of law, by contrast, “embodies certain standards which define the characteristic virtues of a legal system as such.

This chapter explores the historical relationship between Heidegger and Gadamer. It points out several surprises and disappointments that Gadamer experienced with Heidegger. More importantly, the chapter considers the phenomenological character of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer rejects many of the basic characteristics of Husserl’s phenomenology, but he is also indebted deeply to other aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology. These aspects he also shares with Heidegger–the concepts of horizon and lifeworld, the account of temporality, and the rejection of a representational epistemology. The chapter points out the distinctiveness of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in relation to Heidegger’s. Gadamer’s hermeneutics is more dialogical, embraces the antinomy of beginnings, and embraces Plato and Aristotle.

Democracy and the rule of law are both “essentially contested concepts” in common use; indeed both are hurrah terms to which virtually everyone these days seeks to lay claim. In this brief chapter, rather than survey contestants I opt for stipulation. My stipulations are intended to be fairly undemanding, indeed deliberately unoriginal. They might well exclude legitimate contenders and not be uncontroversial, but they are intended to reflect not only my own preferences but central themes in long traditions of thought about these matters.1

Civil disobedience presupposes a state, a legitimate authority that governs a territorial community through binding law. Yet it is often noted that two of the three canonical inspirations for civil disobedience, with whom the practice is said to have begun and to whom nearly all discussions refer, did not grant this premise. Far from accepting the legitimacy of the authorities against which they protested, Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas K. Gandhi expressly rejected them, not only in their current but in any imminently achievable form. The literature on civil disobedience tends to deal with this by treating them as precursors rather than models, mustered alongside figures such as Antigone, Socrates, or Jesus into expansive prehistories of the practice. While they may be exemplars of morally motivated, nonviolent resistance to unjust authority, they did not practice civil disobedience, strictly speaking.1

This chapter explores whether civil disobedience can be not just morally justifiable, but also legally defensible and, if it can be, how states should respond to it. The key question is whether states act legitimately when they punish civil disobedients and, if they do act legitimately, on what grounds. Philosophers have advanced numerous grounds to justify state punishment in general, including retribution or just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation, communicating society’s censure, vindicating victims, and easing political and social tensions. The question is whether any of these grounds can justify states in punishing people who engage in civil disobedience. If states act illegitimately in punishing civil disobedients, which seems likely in many cases, then what distinguishes civil disobedients from other lawbreakers? We discuss various defenses that civil disobedients might make in a court of law to differentiate their conduct from ordinary offenses.

Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is said to have influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign for Indian rights in South Africa, and subsequent drive for Indian independence, which in turn is thought to have inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.’s direction of the American Civil Rights Movement. In this chapter I reverse that genealogy, showing that King construed elements of satyagraha in ways that served the political agenda of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, while playing down aspects of satyagraha that did not fit the American case or even clashed with Judeo-Christian themes that were important within the American movement.

Civil disobedience is typically characterized as morally principled, deliberate, and publicly enacted violation of law by individuals, who do not then seek to evade arrest. It is framed as a “civil” way for citizens to challenge possibly unjust laws or policies: one that is in broad fidelity to their domestic rule of law and good citizenship, even when it involves the refusal to obey some specific law.1 Similarly, a number of commentators have sought to show that some acts which cross state territorial or citizenship boundaries should be understood as trans-state or global civil disobedience. They have focused on deliberate, principled violations of a state’s law by non-citizen activists, asylum seekers, and unauthorized migrants, among others.2

This chapter details a conceptual framework of global citizenship within which such principled lawbreaking beyond the state can be situated. It also highlights a significant underlying distinction between domestic and suprastate civil disobedience which has received relatively little attention in the recent literature.

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.