Civil Disobedience

It has been widely feared - especially in Europe - that among the casualties in the "war against terror" it is now necessary to include a number of civil and political rights that used to form the nucleus of the liberal "Rechtstaat". In such times, it its useful to remember that on both sides of the Atlantic there has existed a powerful alternative political tradition - indeed a tradition that extends far beyond the West. This is the tradition of non-violence, one of the offshoots of which is the civil disobedience expounded and analyzed in this book. This exhaustive and carefully analytical study of civil disobedience, translated from Spanish, is a welcome reminder of the tradition that emphasised precisely the need to focus on the quality of the instruments of politics as much as its objectives. This volume seeks to disentangle the limits and possibilities of the tradition of civil disobedience: in what circumstances is it right, or perhaps necessary, to say "no"? The jurisprudential and philosophical literature discussed here is truly enormous and provides a complex and reliable overview of the main problems. This volume is thus a highly welcome contribution not only to discussions about civil and political rights, but also to the construction of the Europe of tomorrow as a political community worth making a commitment to.

María José Falcón y Tella is a Professor in the Department of Legal Philosophy, Ethics and Politics at Universidad Complutense in Madrid. She is Director of the Instiute of Human Rights at Universidad Complutense in Madrid.