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Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States PDF

176 Pages·2022·2.656 MB·English
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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

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