The University of New Hampshire Law Review Volume 6 Number 1 Pierce Law Review Article 6 September 2007 Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense John Alan Cohan Western State Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Political Science Commons, and the Politics and Social Change Commons Repository Citation John Alan Cohan, Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense, 6 Pierce L. Rev. 111 (2007), available at http://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol6/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Hampshire – Franklin Pierce School of Law at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The University of New Hampshire Law Review by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. File: Cohan - 6 Pierce L. Rev. 1 Created on: 8/20/2007 2:01:00 PM Last Printed: 9/5/2007 9:58:00 AM Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense JOHN ALAN COHAN∗ I. INTRODUCTION Freedom of expression in a free society includes freewheeling public dissent on controversial political issues of the day. Civil disobedience is a form of protest that, while usually peaceful, involves violating the law— usually by trespassing on government property, blocking access to build- ings, or engaging in disorderly conduct. Civil disobedience has been called “the deliberate violation of law for a vital social purpose.”1 In their day in court, civil disobedients have at times sought to interpose the neces- sity defense to justify their conduct.