The “standard” definition of civil disobedience

between the fidelity-to-law requirement and the rule-of-law ideal

Abstract

The “fidelity-to-law” requirement is certainly one of the most debated criteria of the so-called “standard” definition of civil disobedience, most famously developed by John Rawls. This paper examines the grounds and implications of this criterion in relation to the notion of “rule of law” in order to provide a more robust interpretation of that definition. It will be argued, on the one hand, and contrarily to what is often implied by some interpretations, that fidelity to law is not grounded in the rule of law. Once we adopt an asymmetrical interpretation of the latter, the promotion of the rule-of-law ideal cannot indeed be mobilized as the reason why civil disobeyers must be faithful to the law – and, thus, as the reason why they must accept the legal consequences of their acts (punishments included). On the other hand, this paper proposes that the rule of law is not completely unrelated to fidelity to law, as conceived in the standard definition. In regard to the communicative aspects that are inherent to the practice of civil disobedience, both play indeed an important role in implementing a “moral dialogue” for giving effect to the special kind of publicity required by that definition. Therefore, although the rule of law is not at the basis of the fidelity-of-law requirement, it is a presupposition of civil disobedience (implicit in the Rawlsian notion of a “nearly just society”).