Dumbledore's army: civl disobedience in Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between law and literature and analyzes civil disobedience in the light of the book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For that, it uses the law approach in literature, relating the constitution and the acts of Dumbledore's Armada with Dworkin's operational theory of civil disobedience and with the concept of civil disobedience as a fundamental right, in light of the tension between facticity and validity presented by Habermas. In this way, it identifies, in the literary narrative, the classification in types of civil disobedience proposed by Dworkin and discusses, in the specific case, the overlap of disobedience based on justice and that based on politics, in order to identify the conditions that make acts of justified civil disobedience. In addition, it analyzes the tension between legality and legitimacy, with regard to the Ministry of Magic and its educational decrees, which distance the student community from the official circle of power. Finally, it examines the use of persuasive and non-persuasive strategies, as well as the achievement of the purposes of civil disobedience through the acts of Harry Potter and Dumbledore's Army.