Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States

176 Pages·2022·2.656 MB·English

by  James Greenwood-Reeves

Justifying Violent Protest
This book presents a radical, but compelling, argument that liberal democracies
must be able to accommodate violent protest.
We often think of violent protest as being alien to liberal democracy, an
extraordinary occurrence within our peaceful societies. Yet this is simply
untrue. Violent protest is a frequent and normal part of democratic life. The
real question is: should it be? Can rebellion or riot against government ever
be morally justifiable in our society? By framing state demands for obedience
as “legitimacy claims,” or moral arguments, states that make illogical and
unjust laws make weaker arguments for obedience. This in turn gives citizens
stronger moral reasons to disobey. Violence can act as moral dialogue – with
expressive and instrumental value in denouncing unjust laws – and can have
just as important a role in democracy as peaceful protest. This book examines
the activism of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, Extinction Rebellion,
Black Lives Matter, and many other groups internationally to demonstrate that
not only can violent protest be acceptable; in times of grave injustice, it is
unavoidable.
This book will appeal to a broad range of academics, in legal and political
theory, sociolegal studies, criminology, history, and philosophy, as well as others
with interests in contemporary forms of protest.
James Greenwood-Reeves is Lecturer at the School of Law, University of
Leeds, United Kingdom.

Justifying Violent Protest
Law and Morality in Democratic States
James Greenwood-Reeves
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
A GlassHouse book
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 James Greenwood-Reeves
The right of James Greenwood-Reeves to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-22693-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-22695-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27375-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003273752
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Why violent protest? 1
Theoretical background 2
Chapter synopsis 5
Theoretical frames 7
Theoretical presumptions 9
1 Constitutional morality 14
Liberal democratic theory: a very brief overview 16
Moral grounds and constitutional morality 19
Difficulties with constitutional moral principles 25
Chapter 1 conclusion 27
2 Legitimacy 31
Introduction 31
Conceptions of legitimacy 32
Consent 33
Sociological theories 34
Normative rationality 35
Legitimacy claims 38
Legitimation and constitutionality 39
Limitations to this concept 41
State legitimacy 41
Chaos 42
Does a poor legitimacy claim generate automatic duties
to disobey? 44
Prima facie duties of obedience and “everyday law” 44
Amoral constitutions and states 46
Chapter 2 conclusion 48
vi Contents
3 Protest as a legitimacy counterclaim in
democratic constitutions 52
Protest: a brief theoretical overview 53
Protest, constitutional morality, and legitimacy claims 56
Caveats 57
Illustrative cases of legitimacy claims in protest 59
Chapter 3 conclusion 62
4 Violent protest as a legitimacy counterclaim in
democratic constitutions 67
Overview 67
Definitions of violence 68
The roles of political violence 76
Violent protests as legitimacy counterclaims: the
language of violence 81
State violence 87
Chapter 4 conclusion 89
5 General limitations to violent protest 99
“General and specific” limitations to political violence 99
General limitations to violence in protest 100
Illegality 101
Violence as innately immoral 103
Nonviolence as preference 111
Needlessness 117
Instrumentality 120
Social cohesion 124
Chapter 5 conclusion: learning from limitations 127
6 Specific limitations to the legitimacy of violent protest 134
“Legitimate” state monopolies on violence 135
The liberty objection 137
The rule of law or justice objection 140
The democracy objection 144
Chapter 6 conclusion: justifying violent protest 149
Conclusions 156
The US Capitol incident and beyond 159
One last comment: passing on the torch 161
Index 165
Acknowledgments
It is a truism that no author writes their book entirely on their own. What
follows is only the briefest possible list of people to whom I owe the deepest
gratitude, without whom this book could never have been written.
To Dr. Colin Perrin and all the team at Routledge and Taylor & Francis,
I offer countless thanks. This controversial monograph was always going to
present struggles, and I thank you all for your expertise and encouragement
throughout.
To Prof. Conor O’Reilly and Prof. Jen Hendry, who supervised the thesis
on which this project was based, I owe an immeasurable debt. To Dr. Paolo
Sandro and Prof. Candice Delmas, who examined that thesis with rigour and
good humour, I offer my deepest thanks for providing feedback which has
materially improved this book. To Prof. Nick Taylor and Prof. Alastair Mullis,
I offer my sincerest gratitude for inviting me to pursue my doctoral studies at
Leeds under the Teaching and Research Scholarship. To Dr. Rosie Fox and to
Mr. Stuart Taylor, I offer my eternal friendship.
To my good friend Dr. Alex Green, my twin Mr. Edward Greenwood, my
good friend Mrs. Sarah Paul, and my cousin Miss Victoria Greenwood, I offer
my thanks for undertaking the unenviable challenge of reading an early draft
and providing invaluable insight and commentary. All errors, omissions, and
shortcomings herein remain very much mine.
To all my colleagues at Leeds and at Sussex – who have welcomed me, men-
tored me, taught me, encouraged me, and challenged me – I offer my deepest
thanks. And to my students, who have likewise encouraged and challenged me:
with my most sincere gratitude, I wish you all the brightest and happiest future
imaginable, each and every one of you. You deserve it.
To my family: my twin, his partner and my good friend Ms. Laura Anderson,
my sister, father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and cousins, I offer my thanks for
many years of inspiration, reassurance, good books, heated debates, and love.
To my friends, both far and near, too numerous to name: remember that we
all support each other in every action that we do and that none of us achieves
viii Acknowledgments
anything without the help and love of our friends. And so, through your years
of love, this too is the product of that love.
To my husband, Blair Greenwood-Reeves, I offer everything.
Finally, to my late mother, Miss Susan Tims, I offer this: that I shall raise a
glass and promise that I shall not rest on my laurels. There is always more to
be done.
Introduction
Why violent protest?
On 9 August 2014, police in Ferguson, Missouri, shot an unarmed Black man,
Michael Brown, as he fled arrest. Peaceful vigils and protests that night turned
antagonistic, as participants complained of the disrespectful and heavy-handed
police presence at those assemblies. Police in riot gear were soon deployed, and
the “Ferguson unrest” began. Up until 25 August, the day of Brown’s funeral,
the city was the scene of almost continuous protest, rioting, looting, and civil
unrest (Lowery 2017). The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which had
been gathering momentum as a peaceful activist group since 2013, was brought
to international attention as both peaceful and violent protesters made claim to
the movement’s mantras and demands (Russell 2016). Most prominently per-
haps, international news agencies broadcast footage of broken shop windows,
streets occluded with tear gas, and projectiles volleyed between protesters and
riot police.
It was not until November 2014, however, that the worst of the protest vio-
lence took place. That month, charges against the police officer who had shot
Brown were dropped by a grand jury. It was at this juncture – when the crimi-
nal justice system seemed, to protesters, to possess no capacity or will to address
the injustices they saw – that it became clear to activists that Brown’s case
was not an aberrant anomaly in an otherwise just system. It seemed to prove
to them the BLM movement’s central claim, that the criminal justice system
itself was aberrant and unjust. The system that killed unarmed civilians within
their community was the same system that acquitted those officers of crimi-
nal liability (Szetela 2020). Yet the question was asked: this injustice seems to
explain the protest violence, but does it justify it? The Ferguson unrest formed
a starting point in my decision to research beyond theories of civil disobedi-
ence and peaceful protest and instead to ask the question of whether uncivil,
violent, outraged, and indeed outrageous protest can be justifiable within a
liberal democratic society.
Rhetorically, politicians and liberal democratic theorists often claim that
violent protest does not “belong” to democratic states.1 Yet the opposite,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003273752-1