Civil Disobedience is the disobeying or breaking of a law for moral, religious, or other reasons, either by an individual or an organized group. Examples of civil disobedience include refusing to pay taxes, blocking roads or government offices, striking or refusing to work in the offending government, and marching in demonstrations without state permission. The act may be designed to pressure the government to change laws or policies or just to voice opposition and present a "moral witness." Civil disobedience became popular in the United States in the 1960s to protest the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and environmental policy.

A leading writer on civil disobedience was American Henry David Thoreau who coined the term in an essay ("Civil Disobedience") in 1848. Thoreau explained that he broke the law by not paying taxes to the state of Massachusetts to protest the U.S. policy in the Mexican War and the institution of slavery in the South. The failure to protest unjust state laws was effectively contributing to that injustice, in Thoreau's view. He saw civil disobedience as a matter of individual conscience and actually spent time in jail as a consequence.

A leading activist in 20th-century civil disobedience was Mohandas Gandhi in India. Resisting what he saw as unjust British colonial policy, Gandhi organized marches, sit-ins, and hunger strikes. He insisted on the nonviolent quality of civil disobedience, always accepting abuse without returning it. Passive resistance became a part of Gandhi's highly successful civil disobedience in India against the British. He insisted that his nonviolent approach to reforming public policy involved basic respect for law and the social system.

This nonviolent approach to civil disobedience was adopted in the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by black leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who used marches, boycotts, and demonstrations in an attempt to achieve racial justice in the United States. He, like Gandhi, shamed his opponents by using peaceful means of protest, while they responded with police clubs and attack dogs. Organized civil disobedience, then, won social sympathy for the civil rights cause.

The philosophical origin of civil disobedience to state laws goes back to Christian conceptions of God's "higher law," which the faithful must obey even if means breaking civil law. The early Christian refusal to worship Roman rulers led many to be jailed or executed. St. Augustine says that at times the church should advise believers to disobey the state when it violates God's law. Suffering the consequences of government persecution, personal martyrdom is better than disgracing Christ and possibly being sent to Hell for eternity. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologica that if a human law violated a higher natural law or divine law, the Christian may disobey the lower law. For example, because divine law defines food as created to sustain life, if a starving man steals bread to stay alive, he is not breaking the law. In Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other Christians resisted the fascist on religious grounds and were executed by the state.

In all theories of civil disobedience, the perpetrator is expected to accept whatever punishment might result from the action.

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