John Rawls III: Civil Disobedience

Posted: Wed, Apr 8, 2026

Today

  • Recount the vote [15 min]
  • Debrief [15 min]
  • Two principles of justice [20 min]
  • Rawls on civil disobedience [20 min]

Rawls on civil disobedience

  • Question of definition: What counts as civil disobedience?
  • Question of justification: Under what circumstances, if any, is civil disobedience morally permissible if not obligatory?

For Rawls, civil disobedience presupposes a moral duty to obey democratically enacted laws under a legitimate constitution; it is unlike militant revolution or resistance.

  • This is a moral duty, not a legal one.
  • Obeying the law does not require believing that the law is just.
  • This moral duty can be overridden by stronger countervailing considerations—in particular, our moral duty to oppose injustice.

This is why Rawls believes that civil disobedience can take place “only within a more or less just democratic state for those citizens who recognize and accept the legitimacy of the constitution.”

Definition

Rawls: Civil disobedience is “a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.”

  • Civil disobedience is a political minority’s public address to the political majority in response to “persistent and deliberate violation of the basic principles of this [public] conception [of justice] over any extended period of time, especially the infringement of the fundamental equal liberties.”
    • It invokes public principles of justice, not just personal principles of morality.
    • It takes place publicly not privately.
  • Civil disobedience is nonviolent.
    • Violence is incompatible with civil disobedience as a mode of public address.
    • Nonviolence expresses one’s ultimate “fidelity to law.”
  • Civil disobedience is conscientious.
    • It is based on deeply held convictions that the political principles of justice have been violated.
  • Civil disobedience is political.
    • As a form of public speech, it speaks to the political majority’s sense of justice.
    • It is guided by political principles of justice.
    • It is justified by political principles of justice.
  • Civil disobedience is contrary to the law.
    • He has to mean something like thought to be contrary to the law.
  • Civil disobedience is usually aimed at changing the law or governmental policies.
    • This in part distinguishes civil disobedience from ordinary unlawful acts (e.g., fraud) and from conscientious evasion or refusal (e.g., a soldier refusing to obey an order on grounds of conscience).

I’m particularly interested in the issue of violence:

  • “[Civil disobedience] tries to avoid the use of violence, especially against persons, not from the abhorrence of the use of force in principle, but because it is a final expression of one’s case. . . . Indeed, any interference with the civil liberties of others tends to obscure the civilly disobedient quality of one’s act.”
    • Does this really go into the definition of civil disobedience?
    • Can an act still be civil disobedience even if it is not perceived by the public as such?
  • Nonviolence expresses one’s ultimate fidelity to the rule of law?
    • Why, and by what mechanism?
    • Could this not be clarified if it’s a messaging problem?

Justification

Rawls: An act of civil disobedience is [morally? strategically??] justified when all three conditions are met:

  1. It is limited to “instances of substantial and clear injustice, and preferably to those which obstruct the path to removing other injustices.”
  2. “[T]he normal appeals to the political majority have already been made in good faith and that they have failed.”
  3. It is coordinated with and limited by other oppressed groups’ right to dissent in order “to regulate the overall level of dissent.” (“a cooperative political alliance of the minorities”)

Recall King’s point on “Wait!” and “Never!”:

  • “Some have asked: ‘Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?’ . . . Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”
  • “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. . . . For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ . . . This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”