Civil Disobedience to Overcome Corruption: The Case of Occupy Wall Street

One prominent narrative of Occupy Wall Street portrays an ineffective movement of radicals who engaged in unjustified civil disobedience. This portrayal stems from the popular idea that civil disobedience in a democracy can only be justified as an appeal to majority-trumping considerations, such as fundamental human rights. Because the Occupiers’ civil disobedience was aimed at bringing attention to economic inequality — an issue not typically considered to embody majority-trumping characteristics — many questioned whether the Occupiers' civil disobedience was justified. Skeptics asked the following question: If the United States functions as a liberal representative democracy where citizens can legally attempt to put an issue such as economic inequality on the political agenda through free speech and the ballot box, then how can civil disobedience to bring attention to such an issue be justified?This Article proposes that the civil disobedience need not be tied to majority-trumping considerations to be justified in a democracy; civil disobedience also can be justified when it furthers the will of the majority and corrects a democratic deficit. Democratic processes can misfire, and when they do, individuals lose their ability to effectively engage with their lawmakers, which results in a democratic deficit. When a democratic lawmaking institution, such as the U.S. Congress, experiences an institutional corruption and is unable to engage on issues of importance to the people, there is a democratic deficit and a cause for civil disobedience to instigate engagement. The civil disobedience of Occupy Wall Street was justified as a corrective measure to overcome a democratic deficit caused by institutional corruption in the U.S. Congress.Analysis of such civil disobedience is relevant at this point in time — more than four years after Occupy Wall Street — because it is now evident that the Occupiers not only were justified in engaging in civil disobedience, but also that they were successful in putting the issues of economic inequality and institutional corruption on the political agenda.