Book Review: Michael Head’s Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right. By Michael Head. London, U.K.: Routledge, 2024. vii, 198 p. Includes index. ISBN 9780367608323 (hardcover) US$190.00; ISBN 9781003100652 (eBook) US$56.99.

Reviewed by Haley O’Halloran
Research Librarian
Toronto Lawyers Association

While reading this book, Toronto, the city where I live, passed a by-law prohibiting protests from occurring within 50 metres of so-called “bubble zones.” The sites eligible to apply for this designation are schools, places of worship, and childcare centres, of which there are more than 3,000. This by-law is consistent with the international trend of governments attempting to restrict and limit the right to protest, which author Michael Head illustrates throughout Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right.

Head uses the U.K., U.S., and Australia to demonstrate how essential the freedom to protest is in democratic nations and to analyze how that freedom is being threatened. While his analysis does not include Canada, the countries he does focus on have reputations for being liberal democracies and share many similarities to Canada, the most important of which is the U.K.’s legal and democratic values. Head also includes several Canadian examples, such as commentary on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the increase in Canadian anti-protest legislation; for example, the laws enacted after the Wet’suwet’en blockades protesting the development of pipelines that would pass through their unceded territory.

Chapter 1 discusses the increase in the attendance at and volume of protests, attributing this to both a rise in popular discontent and the use of social media to engage more protestors. In Chapter 2, Head reviews the history of protest rights in countries with British heritage, rebutting the notion that this right was achieved through “parliamentary democracy” (p. 23). Instead, he asserts that this right was fought for by “immense social struggles” and established by “centuries of frequently convulsive struggles against authoritarian forms of rule” (p. 44).

In Chapter 3, Head homes in on the question of what legal right to protest is afforded to citizens in the U.K., U.S., and Australia, examining the “limited protection” granted by laws recognizing a right to protest (p. 45). These limitations can also be found in Canada, Head suggests, despite the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, due to the subjective requirement that assembly be “reasonable” (p. 46). Building on this analysis, Chapter 4 focuses on scrutinizing protest rights in countries like Australia and the U.K., where there is no “constitutionally entrenched bill of rights or any other explicit constitutional protection of the rights to free speech and protest” (p. 73).

The book then looks at the use of anti-protest measures, starting in Chapter 5 with laws similar to the Toronto by-law I mentioned above. Anti-protest laws used to be concerned with prohibiting violence, but Head suggests that their current aim is to stop any disruption, particularly those that affect corporate interests, which is a common protest and civil disobedience strategy. Another legal measure sometimes used is treating protests as crimes against the state or threatening a potential state of emergency, justifying the use of more aggressive anti-riot laws. Head examines how this has led to a global increase in police intervention in protests, as well as increased “levels of police violence” (p. 132).

Finally, the last two chapters consider the consequences of limited protest rights, paying particular attention to how this threatens the right to assembly and freedom of speech, and how restricting the capacity for dissent has been historically a fascist tactic with disastrous results. This final section concludes with a Marxist critique of contemporary democracy, suggesting that the threat to protest rights in late-stage capitalism is unavoidable, as the state is concerned with protecting “the power and privileges” of corporations and the wealthy (p. 175).

One of the strongest points that Head makes at multiple times throughout the book is the hypocrisy of the state’s relationship to protest. This can be seen in the lip service that governments and politicians pay to the rights to protest, freedom of speech, and assembly, while simultaneously introducing measures that diminish these same rights. This is particularly interesting in the U.S. examples, which show the country’s increasing intolerance of civil disobedience despite its celebrating protests like the Boston Tea Party.

Democracy, Protest and the Law would be a relevant addition to an academic library’s collection. The analysis of the historical treatment of protest and assembly rights in British colonial legal systems may be of interest to those researching the constitutional significance of anti-protest laws. Similarly, researchers may be interested in the correlation Head draws between the adoption of anti-protest measures and fascism, considering the discontent he speculates will continue to grow because of widening inequality.