This essay will explore the circumstances in which breaking the law to protest against a company's legal but morally questionable activities might be considered 'right'. The fundamental tension lies between the duty to obey the law, a cornerstone of the rule of law, and the exercise of individual conscience, particularly when faced with actions perceived as causing societal or environmental harm. While English law provides very little scope for such justification, arguments can be made through the limited defence of necessity and the qualified rights to protest under the Human Rights Act 1998. This essay argues that while legal justification is exceptionally difficult to establish, the concept of civil disobedience provides a separate, political justification that views law-breaking as a 'right' action in a moral, rather than legal, sense.
The Primacy of the Rule of Law
The starting point for any legal analysis is the principle of the rule of law, which requires that all individuals and organisations are subject to and accountable under the law. This principle demands obedience even to laws one disagrees with (Raz, 1977). Allowing individuals to break laws they deem immoral would risk creating a subjective and chaotic system where legal certainty is lost. The courts are therefore understandably hostile to the idea that a personal moral conviction can excuse criminal conduct. The primary route for challenging a company's legal but immoral behaviour should be through legitimate channels such as parliamentary lobbying, judicial review, or public campaigning, not through criminal acts. The law provides a framework for resolving disputes and creating change, and bypassing this framework threatens its stability.
Potential Legal Justifications for Law-Breaking
Despite the general duty to obey the law, defendants in cases of protest-related crime have attempted to argue that their actions were legally justified. One such avenue is the common law defence of necessity, which operates where a defendant commits a crime to avert a greater evil. The criteria, as established in cases like Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] Fam 147, are strict: the act must be done only to prevent a greater evil, there must be no other reasonable course of action, and the harm caused must be proportionate to the harm avoided.
Protesters have tried to use this defence, for example by arguing that damaging property at a military base was necessary to prevent the greater evil of war. However, the courts have consistently rejected this in the context of political protest. In R v Jones (Margaret) [2006] UKHL 16, protesters who damaged military assets in an attempt to stop the Iraq War were unsuccessful in their necessity defence. The House of Lords held that the 'evil' to be prevented must be an "immediate and direct" threat, not a general or future harm like the consequences of a war or climate change. This high threshold means the necessity defence is almost certain to fail for those protesting a company's ongoing but legal business practices.
Another argument is based on the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 11 (freedom of assembly), incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998. Protesters argue that their actions, even if technically criminal (e.g., trespass or obstruction), are a legitimate exercise of their rights. The Supreme Court in DPP v Ziegler [2021] UKSC 23 confirmed that in assessing whether a conviction for a protest-related offence is a "proportionate" interference with these rights, the courts must conduct a fact-sensitive balancing exercise. However, these rights are qualified and do not provide a 'green light' to commit any crime in the name of protest. Significant criminal damage, for example, is highly unlikely to be seen as a proportionate exercise of protest rights.
Civil Disobedience: A Moral Justification?
Where legal justifications fail, activists may instead rely on the concept of civil disobedience. This is the idea that breaking the law can be a 'right' action from a moral or political standpoint, designed to draw public attention to an injustice and pressure the state or a company to change (Brownlee, 2021). From this perspective, the act is not intended to secure an acquittal in court but to make a public statement. Historical examples, from the Suffragettes to the anti-apartheid movement, demonstrate that law-breaking has sometimes been a catalyst for positive social change. In the context of the question, an activist might believe it is 'right' to occupy a company's headquarters to protest deforestation, fully expecting to be arrested, because they see the public awareness and media attention generated as a greater good that outweighs the criminality of their trespass. This justification is not legal but philosophical, appealing to a higher moral order than the black-letter law.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the circumstances in which it is legally 'right' to break the law to protest a company's immoral but legal actions are extremely narrow, verging on non-existent. The principle of the rule of law requires obedience, and defences such as necessity have been interpreted so restrictively by the courts as to be unavailable for actions against general or future harms. While human rights law requires a consideration of proportionality, it does not provide a blanket defence for criminal acts. Therefore, the only compelling circumstance where such an action might be deemed 'right' is through the extra-legal lens of civil disobedience. Here, the justification is not a legal one aimed at avoiding conviction, but a moral and political one, where the act of law-breaking is seen as a necessary tool to challenge an injustice that the law itself permits. The law remains clear in its prohibition, but the moral debate surrounding the duties of citizens in the face of perceived corporate immorality is far from settled.
References
- Brownlee, K. (2021) 'Civil Disobedience', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Online] Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/civil-disobedience/.
- DPP v Ziegler [2021] UKSC 23.
- R v Jones (Margaret) [2006] UKHL 16.
- Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] Fam 147.
- Raz, J. (1977) 'The Rule of Law and its Virtue', The Law Quarterly Review, 93, pp. 195–211.
