Demarcating Disobedience

Many political philosophers and theorists argue that acts of political disobedience have a special status or cachet and thus should be treated differently — more sympathetically. This defense of disobedience generates a demand for dissidents who engage in such acts (“disobedients”) to differentiate themselves from mere criminals. According to an influential view, disobedients must act in constrained ways that communicate to their audience that their actions are motivated by conscientious convictions or considered judgments about the injustice against which they protest. This view is, however, unable to deliver plausible verdicts about the actions of disobedients in deeply nonideal societies — in which the social meaning of the actions of members of marginalized groups are systematically distorted, or in which there is no tolerance for law violation in general. In response to these difficulties, this article defends a contextualist view of demarcating political disobedience, which relies on the relationship between an act of law violation and collective action. Specifically, an act of law violation is one of political disobedience if a collective claims it as an act that contributes to its goal of enacting social change, and if the law violator assents to such a claim.