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Why Riot? An Expressive Theory of the Justification of Rioting
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ABSTRACT
Political rioting is a durable phenomenon: it is a recurrent feature
of societies across time, space, and political structure. It is also
highly morally contentious. Among those who take rioting to be
justifiable, the dominant approach has been to appeal to the ethics
of war and its interpersonal counterpart, the framework of defensive
ethics, as determining which harms rioting may permissibly inflict.
I argue that this approach is unlikely to succeed. I then propose
and develop an alternative analysis according to which the
expressive norms to which rioting as a form of protest is subject
may license its characteristic harms directly.
