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Is Civil Disobedience Ever Justified?

Updated: Apr 10, 2023

When people of my generation think of civil disobedience we tend to picture black teenagers in the early 1960s sitting at lunch counters in the American South in defiance of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation. They were breaking the law not for personal gain, like bank robbers, but because they believed the law to be immoral. They were deliberately non-violent, and they were willing to be caught and punished for their crime. They were appealing to the conscience of the majority of Americans by calling attention to the laws’ immorality so that legislatures or courts would eventually repeal them.


At least in retrospect, such civil disobedience is praised by most people, because they see Jim Crow laws as immoral. What’s more, the law breaking was relatively harmless insofar as it was peaceful (on the part of the law breakers, at least) and didn’t threaten general anarchy, because the law breakers were willing to be arrested.


Some other cases of law-breaking for reasons of conscience are commonly called “whistle blowing,” and remain controversial. Edward Snowden leaked a host of government documents that he had a contractual obligation to the US government to keep secret. Like the civil rights activists, he had no motive of personal gain, but unlike them he evaded law enforcement and currently lives in Russia.


The documents he illegally released show that our government was illegally spying on its own citizens. But there are legal methods of whistle-blowing about government malfeasance that Snowden failed to use, and his illegal release of documents, the government contends, jeopardizes the country’s intelligence-gathering efforts and thereby our national security.


Both sides make good points. Snowden leaked a large number of government documents to news organizations with the explicit understanding that they wouldn’t publish anything that would jeopardize US personnel or their informants. The news organizations claim that they actively sought and received advice from the National Security Agency (NSA) about the harm that publication of particular documents may cause. As a result, only a small percentage of the documents have yet been disclosed to the public.


The government claims nevertheless that great damage has been done to national security. They haven’t supplied any examples of tangible losses, but how could they without further exposing their personnel and their methods of operation? But lacking evidence, it’s difficult to trust government assertions because secrecy in this case covers up their own illegal behavior.


These considerations don’t completely exonerate Snowden, however. Why didn’t he use the provisions for whistle blowing that the government makes available to its employees, and why did he evaded US government attempts to bring him to trial? As to the first question, Snowden claims that whistle blowing through proper channels has typically resulted in the complaint being suppressed and the employee’s access to classified material terminated. It’s therefore impossible to bring change to government policies and actions through the official whistle-blowing process.


He evaded capture rather than go to court, he contends, because current laws governing his case disallow the traditional defense of necessity. If you’re speeding, you’re not legally guilty if you can show that you’re taking a severely injured person to the hospital. You get a police escort, not a ticket. Snowden claims that because of the way whistle blowing and whistle blowers are treated when they use proper channels, it was necessary for him to bypass those channels and go directly to the press in order to end our government’s illegal activity. He says he would have willingly faced trial if the law allowed him the traditional necessity defense.


Opinions differ about the justifiability of what Snowden did. The deeper problem is that breaking the law because you think it’s immoral can be used in ways that most Americans today find unjustified. Consider someone who believes on religious or sociological grounds that a married woman with under-age children shouldn’t work outside the home. As an employer, he therefore breaks laws that require equal opportunity for women in the workforce. He’s non-violent but resists prosecution because he believes that he’s doing our society a favor by continuing to work on behalf of what he perceives to be family values.


It seems that we praise civil disobedience only when we favor its objectives and the methods. Most people today find equality for women and blacks more valuable than some traditional forms of family arrangements and race relations. But who is to say? Normally, elected representatives and an independent judiciary have the final say about the rules that should guide everyone’s behavior. Civil disobedience, by contrast, ignores these established processes, thereby promoting lawlessness that can be very harmful to society. On the other hand, shouldn’t blacks have been able to eat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter? Shouldn’t illegal government spying be curtailed?


You can respond by e-mail at wenz.peter@uis.edu.


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