As highlighted in Chapter 9, civil disobedience actions are currently especially prolific in the liberal democracies of North American and Western Europe. Here, we discuss the genealogies and justifications of the contemporary practice of civil disobedience, focusing on the elements that have contributed to its adoption by multiple movements. We do so by placing it within two time frames. First, we look at the relatively long history of the development of disobedience in France. Focus on civil disobedience within a political culture which has, historically, not been propitious for the development of this kind of action enables us to trace the contours of the movements which commit acts of civil disobedience, their integration of new modes of action within political struggle, and the reasons that they put forward to justify acts of non-violent lawbreaking; it also allows us to see continuities in movement networks (the genealogies of civil disobedience) and shifts in the basis of adoption and enactment, as disobedience moves from a marginal to more central element of social movement action. Second, we look at a much shorter history of civil disobedience, focusing on the importance of climate justice and global justice problematics to the increased adoption and importance of civil disobedience as a mode of action, which also allows us to place the cultural particularity of the French case within a wider transnational context of movement activism. As we shall see, the question of urgency, of humanitarian or environmental action undertaken within a condition of emergency, is – in common with similar movements outside France – a key argument advanced by campaign groups to explain and legitimize this course of action, though it is articulated in contrasting ways. We observe how the practice of civil disobedience has spread beyond its predominantly religious and pacifist movement roots to be adopted by ‘citizen’ movements across both continents, and has, beyond the emphasis on the securing of formal rights, been integral to recent global waves of protest against neo-liberalism, most notably the global justice movement, Occupy, and the ‘movements of the squares’. We start by discussing the development of disobedience in France.