This brown bag session will explore the role of civil disobedience—the act of breaking the law when protesting—in contemporary democracies. The climate, pro-Palestine, and feminist movements, among others, have expressed growing frustration by leveraging a range public and institutional spaces they perceive to have moral authority—such as campuses and museums—to amplify their messages. What role do they have in democratic health, at a time of fraught political and social relations? How is the tension between legality and legitimacy negotiated across spaces, contexts, and time? And, are traditional theoretical frames adequate to understand this tension? The session will feature the presentation of three perspectives on how to theorise various forms of unlawful protest. It will also be the opportunity to discuss work in progress and to explore an interdisciplinary framing of a key feature of our democratic landscape.