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

Folklore recounts a rather amusing exchange between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The latter spoke first: ―Why, Henry, why are you in jail?‖ To which the younger Thoreau replied: ―My dear Waldo, the question is why are you not!‖ 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 a 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. Perhaps the earliest literary expression of civil disobedience comes from Sophocles‘ Antigone, penned in the fifth century B.C. As the play opens, Creon, King of Thebes, has declared Antigone‘s brother, Polyneices, guilty of treason and ordered that his body lay unburied for the ―birds and scavenging dogs‖ to do with as they will. Motivated by an urgent sense of familial duty and abhorred by the injustice of Creon‘s decree, 5 Antigone deliberately defies the king, spreading dust on her brother‘s body while offering burial rites. A trial ensues in which Antigone expresses her contempt for any manmade law that defies the divine. Her appeal to divine law fails, and Creon condemns her to death. Though the acts of Thoreau and Antigone were illegal, they typically are viewed in positive lights. Slavery posed an abomination, and anyone brave enough to resist, did so justly. Though Antigone defied the King‘s decree, her motives were pure, and Sophocles portrayed the fiery sister as the protagonist, not the villain. Other acts of civil disobedience, including Harriet Tubman‘s Underground Railroad, Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s illegal marches and sit-ins, and Mahatma Gandhi‘s organized incitements to disobey a host of British laws, are unabashedly held up as exemplars to follow. Popular culture views Tubman, King, and Gandhi, not as criminals, but as heroes. The present article examines whether civil disobedience has any role to play in business contexts. In particular, it asks whether businesspeople may choose amongst business regulations, cooperating with the social spirit of regulations that they deem just, complying with the letter of morally neutral regulations, while simultaneously evading regulations that they deem immoral. In other words, must a businessperson fulfill all legal obligations equally, without reference to the particular regulatory law in question, or can the businessperson pick and choose when to cooperate and when to evade? The analysis proceeds in three parts. Part I briefly reviews the philosophical literature. This literature distinguishes illegal acts committed as part of a political strategy to change the law from illegal acts done as an expression of private conscience. Justifications for civil disobedience in a variety of contexts are examined. Part II then turns to the role of civil disobedience in business settings, discussing four illustrative cases. The first case addresses the ethics of hiring undocumented workers. The second and third examine the duty to obey two misconceived workplace-safety laws. The final illustrative case draws on the stylized facts of the ―snail-darter‖ controversy to fashion a hypothetical situation where a corporate executive faces an arguably inane application of an environmental regulation. Part III concludes with reflections and analysis that suggest that in some settings civil disobedience of business regulations can be both expected and justified. The analysis closes by examining the limitations to this proposition. Taken collectively, this article offers insights into the social obligation of a businessperson to obey law. As such, it seeks to contribute to the corporate social responsibility literature. In business settings it may be tempting to simply assume that legal obligation exists without critical reflection. Yet, the decision to obey business regulations is very much a matter of choice. If one accepts that law is generally a societyimposed form of morality, then the choice to comply or to evade becomes a matter of conscience which the topic of civil disobedience can more fully inform. The analysis begins with a brief literature review.