Law and civil disobedience: the constitutional and democratic state in Jeffersonian law

Abstract

Civil disobedience may be conceived of as a mechanism able to exert its effects within the legal world, particularly in a Constitutional and Democratic State. The work of Thomas Jefferson may be studied according to this perspective, considering the thinker’s specific stance on civil disobedience, which he addresses in his political and constitutional writings. The Jeffersonian concept of the State must therefore be examined, as must his definitions of justice and concepts of support, with the distinctions outlined in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Based on these premises, the work seeks to approach the positive possibility of civil disobedience in a specific society, bearing in mind the affirmation of constitutionalism itself, and the basic founding principles not only of the Constitutional and Democratic State of Law, but of society itself.