The elevated spirit of dissent is captured not only by lawful protest, but sometimes also by its opposite. Only reflect on the revered admonitions and actions of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Or consider the message of a noted AIDS activist, Aldyn McKean: “I have an arrest record for civil disobedience that spans 23 years and covers seven states, the District of Columbia, and one foreign country. However, I never go to a demonstration to get arrested; I go to bring about change, and am willing to risk arrest to produce that desired change.”

Quintessentially, McKean is an activist – someone who takes unlawful action to advance his sense of social justice. But not all civil disobedience is cut from the same conceptual cloth. Take, for example, an instance of principled inaction, as when someone unlawfully declines to serve in the military. Nearly a half-century ago, on April 28, 1967, a famous American boxer publicly refused induction into the Army, this at the height of the Vietnam War. Citing religious beliefs, Muhammad Ali boldly reaffirmed what he had declared earlier: “I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” This unlawful act of conscientious protest cost him dearly: he was stripped of his championship title and barred by every state athletic commission from fighting for almost four years. Moreover, he was indicted and convicted of violating the federal draft law. Absent a Supreme Court ruling reversing his conviction on technical grounds, the widely spurned Ali would have gone to prison for five years.