Definitions for "Civil disobedience"
Related Terms:
Passive resistance, Nonviolence, Treason, Mutiny, Sedition, Tyranny, Transgress, Censorship, Proscription, Direct action, Police state, Amnesty, Terrorism, Punishment, Crime, Rebellion, War crime, Sanctions, Censure, Reprimand, Corruption, Illegal, Taboo, Unconscionable, Legitimacy, Justice, Actus reus, Outlaw, Condemn, Retribution, Boycott, Reprimand, Amercement, Terrorist, Patriot act, Tyrant , Unlawful, Admonition, Violate, Condemned, Excuse, Condemnation, Sanction, Forbid, Just, Self-incrimination, Blame, Trespass, Mason, Code of silence
The decision to break specific laws because they are unjust. This tactic of nonviolence was used by the civil rights and farmworker movements to bring about social change.
A nonviolent act of breaking the law to call attention to a certain law or set of laws with questionable morality or legitimacy.
A doctrine of social activism which requires disobedience to unjust laws. Usually held up as heroic and laudable among the politically correct except when practiced by pro-lifers to save human children instead of whales, owls and trees. Such actions by pro-lifers are known as rescues and are not true civil disobedience since no unjust laws are broken. The just laws which protected prenatal human life were destroyed by Roe v. Wade, leaving only a state of anarchy. See also RESCUE and CIVIL OBEDIENCE.
when activists break a law that they consider unjust as a public challenge to the law.
an illegal action performed for the purpose of making a moral protest
Doctrine advocating that an individual may peacefully, publicly, and selectively disobey a morally outrageous government policy, although the individual must be prepared to face the ramifications for such disobedience.
a group's refusal to obey a law because they believe the law is immoral (as in protest against discrimination); "Thoreau wrote a famous essay justifying civil disobedience"
Deliberate, open, and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, military or police orders, or other governmental directives. The command may be disobeyed because it is seen as itself illegitimate or immoral, or because it is a symbol of other policies which are opposed. Civil disobedience may be practiced by individuals, groups, or masses of people.
Nonviolent action that seeks to change a policy or law by refusing to comply with it.
a non-violent but determined resistance to what are believed to be unjust laws or government actions. Freedom Riders in the American south and anti-war protestors who burned draft cards in the sixties engaged in classic civil disobedience. decolonization - a process mandated by the United Nations in 1947 to return or initiate self-government to countries that had been colonized. The process called for the withdrawal of any occupying military forces and a plebescite or vote under the observation and protection of the U.N. Although designated a colony before 1959, Hawai`i has never gone through a U.N. sponsored decolonization.
Nonviolent action in which participants refuse to obey certain laws, with the purpose of challenging the fairness of those laws.
Henry David Thoreau wrote his essay on "Civil Disobedience" to express his view of the proper relationship between the individual and the government. He argued for passive resistance against government policies with which one disagreed. Like all romantics, he glorified individualism and condemned conformity and coercion.
Civil disobedience encompasses the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence. It could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement. Civil disobedience has been used in nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's social welfare campaigns and campaigns to speed up independence from the British Empire), in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, and in the American Civil Rights Movement.
Civil Disobedience is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. Published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government, it expressed Thoreau’s belief that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty both to avoid doing injustice directly and to avoid allowing their acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War.