Arguing with texts: an interpretive sociology of civil disobedience and the law

Abstract

Civil disobedience is an idea, and an action in accordance with the idea, that originates from and is embodied in the acts and writings of mythical and historical persons. Among the most influential of these have been Antigone (Sophocles), Socrates (Plato), Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. This thesis uses a perspective from the sociology of knowledge to examine the relationship between civil disobedience and the law. It does so through an examination of the way the founding texts were interpreted and meaning was ascribed to ideas and acts of civil disobedience in the mid-twentieth century United States of America by protestors, judges, lawyers, and legal academics. This is done through the method of thick description and a conceptualization which treats these categories as possible interpretive communities who have shared strategies for reading the texts of civil disobedience. The relationship between ideas of legality and of civilly disobedient acts is examined through a number of areas where the two might be found to intersect. These include constitutional testing, behaviour constitutionally protected through the speech provision of the First Amendment, justification defences, jury qullification, and conscientious objection. Interpretations of the founding texts in terms of wider political and moral considerations are also considered along with the ways in which these texts were interpreted in relation to civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and anti-nuclear protest. The notion of text as it is used here embraces both the idea of texts as the subjects of differing interpretatios and as objects which have social power and influence, the products of particular discourses. The thesis demonstrates that when protestors and members of the legal profession seek to assert what they believe civil disobedience means and how it is related to the law they are, in more senses than one, arguing with texts. It also examines both why and how this is so.