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Civil disobedience, as a protest mechanism, is one of the important topics discussed in political philosophy. The background of this idea dates back to Henry Thoreau, and later John Rawls played a very influential role in its theoretical development. The aim of this thesis is to conduct a critical study of this idea, focusing on the issue of its justification. The emphasis on the justification is placed firstly due to its central position in the discussions of normative political philosophy and secondly due to the controversial nature of civil disobedience in opposing official legal procedures. To this end, we have first discussed the definition of civil disobedience in two traditional and...