In the 1980s the West German Peace Movement — fearing that the stationing of NATO nuclear missiles in Germany threatened an imminent nuclear war in Europe — engaged in massive protests, including sustained civil disobedience in the form of sit-down demonstrations.

Civil Disobedience and the German Courts traces the historical and philosophical background of this movement and follows a group of demonstrators through their trials in the German criminal courts up to the German Constitutional Court — in which their fate was determined in two important constitutional cases. In this context, the volume also analyzes the German Constitutional Court, as a crucial institution of government, in comparative perspective.

The book is the first full-length English language treatment of these events and constitutional decisions, and it also places the decisions at an important turning-point in German constitutional history.