In today's world “civil disobedience” is a term just tossed around broadly and has seemed to have lost its meaning. The term that used to be a principle form of a protest is now associated with any plain act of resistance, despite whether this act of resistance is nonviolent and even morally grounded. Due to the word “civil disobedience” now not having a clear definition, it has created a weakness in the public's and government's ability to distinguish between a legitimate protest from order and furthermore leading to the undermining of democracy itself.

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This notion of civil disobedience has never purely meant only breaking the law; in fact, it is defined as this idea of restraint. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) and further on John Rawls describe this act as it must meet these three criteria to be considered civil disobedience: public, nonviolent, and the willingness to accept legal consequences for your actions to show your sincerity. This willingness is included in the definition of civil disobedience as it gives it its moral backing. In fact, Powell states, “If the decision to break the law really turns on individual conscience, it is hard to see in law how Dr. King is any better off than… those who also believed deeply in [their] cause.” By accepting punishment, the protester shows respect for the rule of law even if they do not respect certain injustices embedded deep into the law.

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MLK led the civil rights movement using this idea of civil disobedience. His protests had to meet three criteria in order to be approved: they had to rely on nonviolent resistance, in public and willing to accept punishment for their actions. During his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ MLK writes about how unjust laws must be broken and it is the duty as citizens of the US to break unconstitutional laws. However, in order to break these unjust laws they must be broken, but broken openly, peacefully, and with the willingness to accept punishment. The goal was not disruption, but persuasion: to expose injustice so clearly that it could no longer be ignored.

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In today's world, this distinction between protests and civil disobedience is very unclear and movements that contain a mix of peaceful protest and violent disruption are considered under the single label as “civil disobedience.” A perfect example being the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. While the majority of these protests were peaceful, a small number involved billions of dollars in property destruction, vandalism, and fighting directly against law enforcement. Even with these attacks, the public discussions about the BLM movement treated the entirety of this movement as an ununified example of civil disobedience without distinguishing the differences between civil disobedience and violence.

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This leads to an important question, if a movement is under the label of civil disobedience can it still be called that if some of its active participants engage in violence? Well the answer is related to the legitimacy of civil disobedience as it is characterized by its nonviolent character. As violence enters the protest the clarity of the protest being under the label of civil disobedience begins to fall apart.

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Intensified social media has changed how a protest is publicly perceived. These public platforms focus on the visibility, the heightening of emotions, often leading to violent rioting and civil disobedience actions being presented together under the same label of “civil disobedience." In today's environment the label of civil disobedience is used as an emotional tool/rhetorical tool to justify the actions of the movement. However, John Rawls argues, that for an act to be responsible, the “citizen must look to the political principles that underlie and guide the interpretation of the constitution.” When protesters swap these foundational principles for raw emotion or personal interest, the movement loses its legal and moral grounding.

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This uncertainty has larger implications. As the line between nonviolent protest and violent action becomes unclear, it makes it difficult for the general public to review these political movements fairly. The government then gets justification to respond more aggressively than necessary as it can now treat all forms of protest as potential threats rather than having the ability to distinguish just-principled protests, and violent chaos. By increasing the definition of civil disobedience, discussion within today's society risks creating restrictions. More specifically the very restrictions on our freedom that civil disobedience was designed to resist.

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This paper was not made to argue against protest, neither was it to deny the emotions and frustrations that come with movements for justice. By acknowledging this reality, does not require redefining all resistance as civil disobedience. In fact, doing so obscures important moral distinctions and makes it more difficult to assess the legitimacy of different tactics.

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Civil disobedience is strong as it is limited by characteristics such as nonviolence, morality, publicity, and the willingness to accept punishment. When these characteristics are ignored the entire concept of civil disobedience falls. If every form of protest is labeled civil disobedience, the term itself loses its true meaning. Precision matters. Civil disobedience is not a catch-all for resistance, but a demanding standard. As John Rawls argued, in a democracy, the citizen is 'autonomous yet he is held responsible for what he does.' We cannot simply break laws as we please based on political allegiance; we must do so through a shared framework of justice (p 365). If everything is labeled civil disobedience, then nothing truly is.