The debate about protest at Supreme Court justices' homes and the recent death of the great legal historian John Phillip Reid (along with the scurrilous attacks on @joshchafetz) have me thinking again about Reid's great essay on the legality of the mob in US legal history. (1/6) 
Some people seem to think that forms of mass protest that make elites uncomfortable have no place in our democracy. This, of course, was the Tory position in the lead up to the Revolution. They lost. (2/6)
According to Reid, the successful Whig revolutionaries distinguished between illegitimate forms of mass protest, like burning down Thomas Hutchinson's house, and legitimate forms, like scaring the Boston stamp agent, Andrew Oliver, into resigning his position. (3/6)
Reid uncovered nine different justifications for mob action, some of which even the Tories acknowledged. Noteworthy, in the present context: actions against imperial agents in defense of fundamental rights, especially when other avenues of effective dissent were cut off. (4/6)
Not all mass protests are the same. But loud, angry demonstrations against government officials in the name of vindicating fundamental rights when other avenues of democratic change have been rendered ineffectual is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." (5/6)
Tories, obsessed with the threat of anarchy and disorder, have always objected. The Whig mobs, Reid argued, had a very different understanding of law and democracy. Pick your ancestors? (6/6)
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