Civil Disobedience in a Business Context: Examining the Social Obligation to Obey Inane Laws

Folklore recounts a rather amusing exchange between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The conversation reportedly took place as Thoreau spent a night in a Massachusetts jail for failure to pay his poll tax. Thoreau conscientiously refused to pay a tax that would support both slavery and a war with Mexico that he deemed unjust. The night in jail would prompt Thoreau's classic essay on civil disobedience, broadly defined as the deliberate violation of law for reasons of conscience and moral principle. The present article examines whether civil disobedience has any role to play in the business context. Part I briefly reviews the philosophical literature. Part II then turns to the role of civil disobedience in business settings, discussing four illustrative cases. Part III concludes with reflections and analysis that suggest that in some settings civil disobedience of business regulations can be both expected and justified.