Civil disobedience is a familiar protest tactic. From Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr, some of our most iconic reformers have engaged in nonviolent, unlawful social action.
But it isn’t always necessary to disobey the law to defy a legal regime. Critics can also press their point by adhering to directives in ways that are consistent with their literal language but inconsistent with common practice or common sense – a tactic we call “uncivil obedienceâ€.
In the ongoing struggle over police reform, civil disobedience is now being met with uncivil obedience. After protesters outraged by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner shut down streets, bridges and shopping malls, the head of New York City’s largest police union urged officers to pay close attention to the regulations that guide officers’ conduct. Simply by sticking to the “stupid rulesâ€, Patrick Lynch suggested, cops could fight back against their “enemiesâ€.
The specifics of Lynch’s proposal remain hazy, as does its relationship to the unusual patterns of law enforcement that have since been reported. All he told NPR this week was, “If the policy is wrong, then change it. We’ll follow our orders.†But if Lynch’s precise plan is unclear, his underlying insight is well-founded: compliance with almost any rulebook can become a tool of resistance. Through uncivil obedience, the law can be turned against itself.
When Angela and David Boyter protested the federal marriage tax penalty by divorcing each December, filing as single people and remarrying each January, they were engaging in uncivil obedience. So were the American Airlines pilots who protested a cost-cutting plan by “working to rule†and delaying flights with an endless stream of technically mandatory maintenance requests. And so was the female philosopher who protested a “no pants†rule for women by dropping her trousers in public view.
As the current struggle over policing reflects, while civil disobedience is strongly associated with political liberals, uncivil obedience holds appeal for the right as well as the left. Recent work in social psychology suggests why that might be: deference to established authority supplies an important moral foundation for self-identified conservatives. Because it keeps to the letter of the law, uncivil obedience can be reconciled with this moral commitment.
For similar reasons, uncivil obedience has proven an attractive tool for government actors. Civil disobedience and government service are an awkward fit; most officials who exhibit a taste for law-breaking will soon find themselves out of a job. Uncivil obedience, however, allows aggrieved officials to dissent and disrupt without leaving the fold of the law-abiding.
Such governmental incivility has been on vivid display in recent years. Arizona’s controversial immigration measure SB 1070, for instance, challenged federal policy not by disregarding federal law, but instead by copying it word-for-word and requiring police officers to maximally enforce certain provisions. Republican Senators challenged the now-defeated Democratic majority through relentless use of quorum calls, motions to reconsider and other lawyerly devices from the chamber’s rulebook. At both the state and federal levels, American politics is suffused with uncivil obedience.
To the extent that there has been a rise in extreme law-following relative to explicit law-breaking, it might look like progress. Even the defenders of civil disobedience generally concede that it can be justified only in limited circumstances.
Yet if uncivil obedience avoids lawlessness and occasionally does some real good, it carries its own risks for society. By manipulating legal language for unintended ends, uncivil obedience not only frustrates some of the law’s central goals – such as the maintenance of tradition and accountability – but also mocks the law’s aspiration to guide our conduct in a principled fashion.
A paradox may follow. Although the civil disobedient openly breaches some part of the law, her willing submission to punishment reinforces the legal system as a whole. The uncivil obedient, in contrast, touts adherence to the rulebook while undermining its credibility and workability. Especially when it is performed by government actors, uncivil obedience eats away at the law from within.
After Patrick Lynch’s remarks became public, a spokesman insisted that Lynch was just telling police officers to “do the job right, do the job according to the rules, which is good advice anytime.†But fixating on the letter of the rules without regard for their purposes or ordinary applications is not an approach designed to respect the law. It is a proposal every bit as subversive as a call for civil disobedience.
