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23 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 205 (1966)
A Lawyer Looks at Civil Disobedience

handle is hein.journals/waslee23 and id is 215 raw text is: Washington and Lee Law Review Member of the National and Southern Law Review Conferences Volume XXIII Fall, 1966 Number 2 A LAWYER LOOKS AT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE* Lxwis F. POWELL, JR.t We have witnessed, over the past decade, the rise of a heresy which could weaken the foundations of our system of government, and make impossible the existence of the human freedoms it strives to protect. This is known as the doctrine of civil disobedience. Its basic ap- proach is that the ancient justification for revolt against tyranny can somehow be transmuted into a rule for day to day life under a system of government under law. Putting the old wine of revolution into the new wineskin of constitutional government, it argues appealingly that: some laws are just and others unjust; that each person may determine for himself, in accordance with his own conscience, which laws are unjust; and that each is free to violate the unjust laws- provided he does so peacefully. The doctrine of civil disobedience has been associated with the civil rights movement, and for this reason it has gained a wide and respectable following. One would have supposed that lawyers, trained in logic, and the guardians of our legal system, would have rallied promptly to denounce civil disobedience as fundamentally inconsistent with the rule of law. Yet most lawyers have remained silent, and of the few who have expressed opinions a surprising number have written in justification.' This remarkable surface consensus-among social scientists; the- ologians, politicians and even many lawyers-is understandable only in the context of the deep emotions engendered by the civil rights move- ment. But lawyers, of all people, must retain a wholesome degree of rational detachment in face of emotional causes, however appealing. Our profession has a heavy responsibility for the preservation of the *This is the John Randolph Tucker Lecture delivered at the School of Law, Washington and Lee University, on April 16, 1966. t B.S. 1929, LL.B. 1931, Washington and Lee University, LL.M. 1932, Harvard University. President, American Bar Association 1964-65. ISee, for example, Black, The Problem of the Compatibility of Civil Disobedience witb American Institutions of Government, 43 Texas L. Rev. 492 (1965); Wofford,

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