Mass refusal can make a rule unenforceable before anyone wins the argument

The argument

A second case for civil disobedience sets the moral question aside and treats the tactic as a practical one. Advocates point out that no rule is enforced by the authority alone: enforcement requires officials, courts, cells and the time of all of them, and the supply of each is finite. A law that almost everyone obeys costs almost nothing to maintain. A law that enough people openly refuse becomes expensive to maintain, and proponents argue that at some point the cost exceeds whatever the rule was worth to those who imposed it. On this account the tactic does not need to persuade anybody. It needs only enough participants that enforcement becomes impractical, which supporters say is a far lower bar than converting a majority. They also note that the cost falls directly on the body that can change the rule, rather than on a public that must then be organised into pressure, so the feedback is immediate rather than mediated. Advocates add that open refusal spreads more readily than other tactics once it begins. Where the risk of acting alone is high, the risk of acting alongside many others is lower, so each additional participant makes participation safer for the next. Proponents hold that this is why noncompliance can pass from marginal to general quickly, and why authorities treat small acts of it as more serious than their immediate effect would suggest. Supporters conclude that civil disobedience is the method that most reliably reaches the point of decision. Persuasion may or may not arrive; a rule that cannot be enforced has already stopped operating, and formal repeal becomes a matter of tidying up rather than of winning consent.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that authorities facing mass refusal often respond by raising penalties rather than abandoning the rule, and that the resulting escalation falls hardest on the least protected participants. They also argue that a rule suspended by unenforceability rather than repealed can be revived the moment numbers fall. A further objection is that treating law as a cost problem invites the same reasoning from movements whose aims the protesters would reject, since the tactic carries no commitment about what it is used for.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Enforcement capacity can be expanded, and selective prosecution of a few can deter many at small cost. [Rejecting P2] Rules defended for symbolic or political reasons may be worth almost any enforcement cost to those who hold them. [Rejecting P3] Risk can rise rather than fall with numbers, if authorities respond to scale with harsher and more indiscriminate measures. [Rejecting C] A rule that stops operating without being repealed leaves the grievance formally intact and available for revival.