Civil Disobedience Definitions

In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau opens by saying, “I heartily accept the 

motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’", and then clarifies that his true belief is “That government is best which governs not at all”. Thoreau considers civil disobedience a moral and social duty of American citizens. He defines civil disobedience as an act of consenting resistance, achieved by not obeying laws he considers to be hypocritical.

"I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek." So wrote Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1963. King was offering a middle way,  that addresses the unfairness of segregation but doesn't call for violent confrontation with the American government. However, he was not suggesting that nonviolent civil disobedience is a tactic that follows the rule of law but that, it acts outside the law. His strategy was to purposefully break laws that are unjust. The important point is that the tactics used by King’s movement for civil rights were successful, in the long-term, because they solved a situation that wasn't going away, using the revolutionary path advocated by Black Nationalists. He offered a simple choice: witness your country ripped in half and descend into chaos, or follow this middle path of reform and civil rights. 

Gandhi famously said, “nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.” This  

statement means that nonviolence is a tactic best used by protest and resistance movements that are in a position of strength. King’s civil rights movement, similarly to Gandhi’s independence movement, found itself in a position of strength—and in fact drew strength from the more militant Black Nationalists. 

To me, Aude-Marie, Civil Disobedience is purposefully breaking an unjust law to have it revoked. It is the people using their power to overthrow a government's unjust judgement.

http://theindependent.ca/2014/01/20/dr-martin-luther-king-strategies-and-tactics-of-civil-disobedience/#sthash.qg4u7ZZd.dpuf

http://www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-summary-civil-disobedience/