Introduction: Why, Once Again, Civil Disobedience?

Why another volume devoted to civil disobedience? Libraries are filled with thick tomes devoted to the topic. Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., canonical figures in the history of civil disobedience, not only inspired countless familiar and not-so-familiarmovements but also ignited extensive political and scholarly debate. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, civil disobedience became a fashionable subject for discussion among lawyers, philosophers, political scientists, and many others. Prominent intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt, Ronald Dworkin, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Bertrand Russell, produced significant theoretical statements about it. What possibly remains to be said about something that fascinated so many of the most innovative and influential political thinkers in the last century? Ongoing political trends underscore the necessity of revisiting the theory and practice of civil disobedience. This volume aims to do so in a suitably systematic fashion. Most significantly, we are witnessing a proliferation of (sometimes novel) politically motivated illegalities, with grassroots activists frequently viewing their actions as examples of civil disobedience. Givenwidespread dissatisfactionwith normal political mechanisms even in well-established liberal democracies, in conjunction with the startling worldwide rise of authoritarian populism, the trend seems likely to continue, as a growing number of individuals and groups pursue controversial, unconventional, and oftentimes illegal political action. Black Lives Matter protestors targeting racialized policing, so-called “digital disobedients” (e.g., Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden), Extinction Rebellion climate change activists, sexual harassment victims who fought unsuccessfully to derail Brett