In this paper, we determine whether illegal hunting should be construed as a crime of dissent. Using the Nordic countries as a case study where protest-driven, illegal hunting of protected wolves is on the rise, we reconsider the crime using principles of civil disobedience. We invoke the conditions of intentionality, nonevasion, dialogic effort, non-violence and appeal to parameters of reasonable disagreement about justice and situate the Nordic illegal hunting phenomenon at a nexus between conscientious objection, assisted disobedience and everyday resistance. This examination leads us to contend that the crime has heretofore received an inadequate response limited to punishment and deterrence. This contention finds support in the worsening predicaments of illegal hunting following harsh sanctions and stigmatization. Although hunters publicize injustices through their crimes, we find that killing wolves as a means to deliberative ends disqualifies hunters’ dissent as legitimate disobedience, creating an obligation of deliberative uptake on the part of society. Nonetheless, in a critical contribution to the field of criminal justice, we argue that it is instead the conditions of deliberative suboptimality experienced by hunters that create this obligation of uptake. Hence, in order to fulfill this obligation, we contend that the burden falls on regulatory agencies to better articulate the justifications for the policies that coerce hunters. We also advocate creating novel institutions to provide hunters with effective opportunities for contesting wildlife conservation directives.

Why does constitutionalism sustain itself as the primary language of politics in a postcolonial democracy like India? This dissertation answers this question by arguing that constitutionalism sustains itself as the primary language of politics for Indian democracy because of enduring anticolonial justifications for it that emerge from epistemically diverse worldviews in Indian society. In particular, this dissertation explores Islamic and anti-caste justifications for an anticolonial pluralist political conception of constitutionalism in India. In studying constitutionalism as an outcome of diverse anticolonial justifications for it, this dissertation demonstrates that the political conception of constitutionalism in India is not merely a continuation of liberal-imperial ideas of constitutionalism. Instead, popular justifications of constitutionalism in India, even in its current moment of crisis, have a genealogy that emerges from epistemically diverse anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism that took shape during constitutionalism's moment of creation in India. It makes this argument in three steps. First, by interrogating how liberal imperialism constructed the political domain in colonial India. Second, by exploring how anticolonialism critiqued this liberal imperial construction of the political domain and used these criticisms to justify a pluralist political conception for postcolonial constitutionalism. Third, by analyzing how these anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism are employed in postcolonial Indian democracy to maintain constitutionalism as the language of politics even when it faces a severe threat from Hindu majoritarianism. This dissertation demonstrates that anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism in India, which emerged from Islamic and anti-caste worldviews, remain relevant to the democratic discourse around constitutionalism and the political conception that it shapes for India by examining four significant justifications for constitutionalism in India. The first justification is captured by anticolonial worldmaking adopted by constitutionalism in India to acknowledge, forefront, and make legible to political life the background conditions for common life in India. This justification of worldmaking, which anticolonial thought regularly reflected on and brought to the fore of public life in India, includes (a) deeply ingrained dispositions about mutual coexistence that subconsciously shaped its participants for a millennium through the unfolding of overlapping geographical, linguistic, ethical and social worlds of diverse worldviews in India, and (b) agentic forms of participation, shaped by diverse groups in India coming into public spaces and employing constitutionally guaranteed political freedoms, to discursively construct the world that is India as one that is plural, progressive and enables self-respect despite being shaped by non-secular ideas. The second form of justification for constitutionalism in India lies in the use of non-secular conceptions of progress, where progress is not simply captured by a developmental conception but by the ethical modes of learning and knowledge-building through which constitutionalism enables diverse people to learn about others in the political community and develop a conception of fraternity. This dissertation shows how conceptions of fraternity that justify constitutionalism in India enable a non-secular conception of progress, pluralism, and self-respect in democracy in India. However, it also examines how a majoritarian conception of constitutional democracy threatens this conception of fraternity in India's postcolonial democracy. The third justification of constitutionalism emerges from endorsements for it that emerge from its capacity to enable self-respect, where diverse individuals who are shaped by the institutions and normative order established by constitutionalism demand that this order enable recognition, communication, association, and self-consciousness across the diverse groups that shape Indian society. Such a conception of self-respect, which derives its ideas from anticolonial conceptions of self-respect, is more expansive than conceptions of self-respect that emerge from Transatlantic liberalism because it reflects how colonialism shaped counter-concepts to self-respect across whole societies and worldviews, and not just as conditions that impact individuals alone. When this pluralist and emancipatory political conception of constitutionalism is threatened by other interpretations of constitutionalism by those in power, as it is by religious majoritarianism in its current moment of crisis, it is reaffirmed in sites of civil disobedience across India's postcolonial democracy where epistemically diverse interpretations of constitutionalism are not only respected but esteemed as justifications for constitutionalism in India. Such a form of participation in democratic politics through civil disobedience has led to a justificatory discourse around constitutionalism that draws on a pluralist conception of participation as the fourth justification of constitutionalism in India. These four interlinked justifications of constitutionalism in India have enabled a plural political conception of constitutionalism that survives in India, despite the threat to it from Hindu majoritarian politics. In exploring why justificatory discourse around constitutionalism enables democracy in India, this dissertation also develops an anticolonial u conception of justification as a form of making political principles legible to diverse peoples who were formerly colonized, as opposed to a strictly rational discourse of separating right from wrong in public reason that shapes democratic societies.

No description available.

Moral concerns should be relevant to the choice of the best legal theory on both theoretical and moral grounds because social practices such as law can change due to the theorizing activity. Hart's concept of law provides grounds for claiming that rules of social morality can constrain law in more ways than he admits in his minimum content of natural law. The belief that social morality constrains valid law allows one to treat the question of civil disobedience as sensitively as a legal positivist and leads to neither anarchism nor passivism. At the other extreme, Dworkin's law as integrity interpretation, which claims law is concerned with political morality through and through, leads to morally regrettable consequences when adopted as a normative theory of adjudication. Theoretical difficulties also flow from Dworkin's identification of the role of judge and legal theorist: that a legal theorist must be a participant in any legal system she interprets does not mean she should adopt or exclusively focus on a judge's perspective on that system. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The main purpose of the dissertation is to describe how four Swedish newspapers construct ethical standpoints and what norms they prescribe. This is done through a characterization of the civil disobedience discourse, in particular the discourse about animal rights activism and militant vegans, around the turn of the millennium (1990-2004). Questions asked are how Swedish newspapers construct civil disobedience, what disobedience is supported and what is condemned, and if the newspapers recognize the complexity of ethical dilemmas and facilitate well-reasoned ethical standpoints. The material studied is gathered from Stockholm-based newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. In total 1115 texts. The methods used are a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, where the qualitative analysis is based on rhetorical analysis and narratology. The results show that there are mainly two overarching discourses. One supporting discourse, which is predominant in the representation of campaigns justified by economical issues, human rights, peace/anti-war movement and individual rights. One criminalising or demonising discourse, which is predominant in the constructions of militant vegans, the environmental movement and a campaign justified by democratic reasons in Sweden. In sum, the constructions are characterized by strong polarization, formalisation, ambivalence and a double standard of morality, which risk to circumscribe the understanding of moral dilemmas. The consequence is journalistic constructions where the ends justify the means when the end is a political correct, not defiant norm, or when the end is non political. The dissertation also argues that the concepts, specific words, journalists apply in their representation of social reality risk to set the limits for media representations, as well as for the public's understanding, of the social reality and moral dilemmas.

This thesis investigates if Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks constitute a valid form ofcivil disobedience online. For this purpose a multi-dimensional framework is established,drawing on Brownlee’s paradigm case and classical theory of civil disobedience. Threedifferent examples of DDoS attacks are then examined using this framework - the attacksfrom the Electronic Disturbance Theater in support of the Zapatista movement;Anonymous’ Operation Payback; Electrohippies’ attack against the World TradeOrganization. Following the framework, none of these DDoS attacks are able to constitute acivilly disobedient act online. The thesis then goes on and identifies four key issues, drawingon the results from the examples: The loss of 'individual presence', no inimitable feature ofDDoS attacks, impeding free speech and the danger of western imperialism. It concludes thatDDoS attacks cannot and should not be seen as a form of civil disobedience online. Thethesis further proposes that online actions, in order to be seen as civilly disobedient actsonline, need two additional features: An 'individual presence' of the protesters online tocompensate for the remoteness of cyberspace and an inimitable feature in order to berecognizable by society. Further research should investigate with this extended framework ifthere are valid forms of civil disobedience online.

Syftet med undersökningen är att genomföra en deskriptiv studie av två nätverk inom densvenska fredsrörelsen och deras arbete samt undersöka hur de förhåller sig till social rättvisa ochsocialt arbete. Den metod som använts är kvalitativ, och datainsamling har skett via kvalitativaintervjuer med fyra respondenter. Det framkommer i dessa intervjuer att respondenterna ärorganiserade i nätverk och en del av den Svenska fredsrörelsen. De använder sig ibland av civilolydnad i symboliskt syfte för att stimulera till dialog kring frågor som vapenexport ochavrustning. Respondenterna står i sitt arbete för jämlikhet, solidaritet och deltagande. Slutsatsersom dras i denna studie är att respondenternas arbete skulle kunna ses som en form avpåverkansarbete för icke nationsbunden solidaritet med utsatta människor, någonting som skullekunna inkluderas i socialt arbete. Respondenternas arbete skulle också, i en mycket vidbemärkelse, kunna ses som en form av socialt arbete i icke statlig regi. Delar av deras arbete ärdock olagligt och således inte förenligt med traditionellt socialt arbete i Sverige som det ser utidag. / The purpose of this essay is to accomplish a descriptive study of two networks in the Swedishpeace movement and their work together with a study of how they stand in relation to socialjustice and social work. The method used is qualitative and the collection of data has been donevia qualitative interviews with four responders. It comes through in these interviews that therespondents are organized in networks and a part of the Swedish peace movement. Theysometimes work with civil disobedience in a symbolic purpose to stimulate a dialogueconcerning questions such as weapon export and disarmament. The respondents stand in theirwork for equality, solidarity and participation. Conclusions of the thesis are that the work of ourrespondents could possibly be a form of advocacy work concerning non national boundsolidarity with vulnerable people, something which could be incorporated in social work. Therespondents work could also, in a broad sense, be seen as a form of non-governmental socialwork. Part of their work is illegal though and because of that not consistent with traditionalsocial work in Sweden as it is functioning today.

This dissertation studies conflict in a hierarchical international system, the British Empire. How did the British Empire respond to violent and nonviolent resistance within its colonies? I develop a theory explaining how and why an imperial metropole becomes involved in and grant concessions to its colonies. Unlike federal nation-states and looser relationship like in an international organization, modern European empires were characterized by selective engagement of the metropole with its peripheral colonies. This has important implications for understanding metropolitan response to peripheral resistance. In contrast to more recent work, I find that violence was more effective at coercing metropolitan concessions to the colonies in the British Empire than nonviolence. I argue that this occurred because violence overwhelmed the capabilities of local colonial governments, and violence commanded metropolitan attention and involvement. This theory is supported with a wide range of data, including yearly measures of anticolonial resistance, every colonial concession made by the British Empire after 1918, daily measures of metropolitan discussions of colonial issues from cabinet archives, and web-scraped casualty data from British death records. In addition, I present in-depth case studies of British responses to resistance in Cyprus and the Gold Coast, along with a conceptual schema of different types of resistance to understand strikes, riots, terrorism, and civil disobedience in a number of other British colonies. My findings show that the effectiveness of resistance is conditional on the political structure that it is embedded in and that hierarchy matters for understanding state responses to resistance.

No description available.

Ce mémoire sur les fondements de la désobéissance civile se divise en trois parties. Le premier chapitre concerne la définition de la désobéissance civile d’après l’analyse d’Hugo Adam Bedau. Le deuxième chapitre traite des origines historiques du concept à partir des textes de David Henry Thoreau et Léon Tolstoï jusqu’aux campagnes de Mohandas Gandhi et Martin Luther King. Le dernier chapitre porte sur la pratique de la désobéissance civile dans les régimes démocratiques selon John Rawls. L’objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer que la désobéissance civile est conforme à la justice malgré son caractère illégal, qu’elle a été bénéfique historiquement à l’évolution des mentalités et qu’elle est nécessaire en démocratie. / This study regarding the foundation of civil disobedience is divided in three parts. The first chapter concerns the definition of civil disobedience by Hugo Adam Bedau. The second chapter deals with the historical origins of the concept from the writings of David Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy to the campaigns of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The last chapter focus on the practice of civil disobedience in democratic regimes according to John Rawls. The purpose of this study is to prove that civil disobedience is true to justice despite being illegal, that it has been historically beneficial in the evolution of mentalities and that it is essential to democracy.