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Just and Unjust Laws: an Analysis by Martin Luther King Jr.

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A Summary and Analysis of Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is Martin Luther King’s most famous written text, and rivals his most celebrated speech, ‘ I Have a Dream ’, for its political importance and rhetorical power.

King wrote this open letter in April 1963 while he was imprisoned in the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama. When he read a statement issued in the newspaper by eight of his fellow clergymen, King began to compose his response, initially writing it in the margins of the newspaper article itself.

In ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, King answers some of the criticisms he had received from the clergymen in their statement, and makes the case for nonviolent action to bring about an end to racial segregation in the South. You can read the letter in full here if you would like to read King’s words before reading on to our summary of his argument, and analysis of the letter’s meaning and significance.

‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’: summary

The letter is dated 16 April 1963. King begins by addressing his ‘fellow clergymen’ who wrote the statement published in the newspaper. In this statement, they had criticised King’s political activities ‘unwise and untimely’. King announces that he will respond to their criticisms because he believes they are ‘men of genuine good will’.

King outlines why he is in Birmingham: as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he was invited by an affiliate group in Birmingham to engage in a non-violent direct-action program: he accepted. When the time came, he honoured his promise and came to Birmingham to support the action.

But there is a bigger reason for his travelling to Birmingham: because injustice is found there, and, in a famous line, King asserts: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ The kind of direction action King and others have engaged in around Birmingham is a last resort because negotiations have broken down and promises have been broken.

When there is no alternative, direct action – such as sit-ins and marches – can create what King calls a ‘tension’ which will mean that a community which previously refused to negotiate will be forced to come to the negotiating table. King likens this to the ‘tension’ in the individual human mind which Socrates, the great classical philosopher, fostered through his teachings.

Next, King addresses the accusation that the action he and others are taking in Birmingham is ‘untimely’. King points out that the newly elected mayor of the city, like the previous incumbent, is in favour of racial segregation and thus wishes to preserve the political status quo so far as race is concerned. As King observes, privileged people seldom give up their privileges voluntarily: hence the need for nonviolent pressure.

King now turns to the question of law-breaking. How can he and others justify breaking the law? He quotes St. Augustine, who said that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ A just law uplifts human personality and is consistent with the moral law and God’s law. An unjust law degrades human personality and contradicts the moral law (and God’s law). Because segregation encourages one group of people to view themselves as superior to another group, it is unjust.

He also asserts that he believes the greatest stumbling-block to progress is not the far-right white supremacist but the ‘white moderate’ who are wedded to the idea of ‘order’ in the belief that order is inherently right. King points out both in the Bible (the story of Shadrach and the fiery furnace ) and in America’s own colonial history (the Boston Tea Party ) people have practised a form of ‘civil disobedience’, breaking one set of laws because a higher law was at stake.

King addresses the objection that his actions, whilst nonviolent themselves, may encourage others to commit violence in his name. He rejects this argument, pointing out that this kind of logic (if such it can be called) can be extended to all sorts of scenarios. Do we blame a man who is robbed because his possession of wealth led the robber to steal from him?

The next criticism which King addresses is the notion that he is an extremist. He contrasts his nonviolent approach with that of other African-American movements in the US, namely the black nationalist movements which view the white man as the devil. King points out that he has tried to steer a path between extremists on either side, but he is still labelled an ‘extremist’.

He decides to own the label, and points out that Jesus could be regarded as an ‘extremist’ because, out of step with the worldview of his time, he championed love of one’s enemies.

Other religious figures, as well as American political figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, might be called ‘extremists’ for their unorthodox views (for their time). Jefferson, for example, was considered an extremist for arguing, in the opening words to the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. ‘Extremism’ doesn’t have to mean one is a violent revolutionary: it can simply denote extreme views that one holds.

King expresses his disappointment with the white church for failing to stand with him and other nonviolent activists campaigning for an end to racial segregation. People in the church have made a variety of excuses for not supporting racial integration.

The early Christian church was much more prepared to fight for what it believed to be right, but it has grown weak and complacent. Rather than being disturbers of the peace, many Christians are now upholders of the status quo.

Martin Luther King concludes his letter by arguing that he and his fellow civil rights activists will achieve their freedom, because the goal of America as a nation has always been freedom, going back to the founding of the United States almost two centuries earlier. He provides several examples of the quiet courage shown by those who had engaged in nonviolent protest in the South.

‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’: analysis

Martin Luther King’s open letter written from Birmingham Jail is one of the most famous open letters in the world. It is also a well-known defence of the notion of civil disobedience, or refusing to obey laws which are immoral or unjust, often through peaceful protest and collective action.

King answers each of the clergymen’s objections in turn, laying out his argument in calm, rational, but rhetorically brilliant prose. The emphasis throughout is non nonviolent action, or peaceful protest, which King favours rather than violent acts such as rioting (which, he points out, will alienate many Americans who might otherwise support the cause for racial integration).

In this, Martin Luther King was greatly influenced by the example of Mahatma Gandhi , who had led the Indian struggle for independence earlier in the twentieth century, advocating for nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. Another inspiration for King was Henry David Thoreau, whose 1849 essay ‘ Civil Disobedience ’ called for ordinary citizens to refuse to obey laws which they consider unjust.

This question of what is a ‘just’ law and what is an ‘unjust’ law is central to King’s defence of his political approach as laid out in the letter from Birmingham Jail. He points out that everything Hitler did in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s was ‘legal’, because the Nazis changed the laws to suit their ideology and political aims. But this does not mean that what they did was moral : quite the opposite.

Similarly, it would have been ‘illegal’ to come to the aid of a Jew in Nazi Germany, but King states that he would have done so, even though, by helping and comforting a Jewish person, he would have been breaking the law. So instead of the view that ‘law’ and ‘justice’ are synonymous, ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is a powerful argument for obeying a higher moral law rather than manmade laws which suit those in power.

But ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is also notable for the thoughtful and often surprising things King does with his detractors’ arguments. For instance, where we might expect him to object to being called an ‘extremist’, he embraces the label, observing that some of the most pious and peaceful figures in history have been ‘extremists’ of one kind of another. But they have called for extreme love, justice, and tolerance, rather than extreme hate, division, or violence.

Similarly, King identifies white moderates as being more dangerous to progress than white nationalists, because they believe in ‘order’ rather than ‘justice’ and thus they can sound rational and sympathetic even as they stand in the way of racial integration and civil rights. As with the ‘extremist’ label, King’s position here may take us by surprise, but he backs up his argument carefully and provides clear reasons for his stance.

There are two main frames of reference in the letter. One is Christian examples: Jesus, St. Paul, and Amos, the Old Testament prophet , are all mentioned, with King drawing parallels between their actions and those of the civil rights activists participating in direct action.

The other is examples from American history: Abraham Lincoln (who issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War, a century before King was writing) and Thomas Jefferson (who drafted the words to the Declaration of Independence, including the statement that all men are created equal).

Both Christianity and America have personal significance for King, who was a reverend as well as a political campaigner and activist. But these frames of reference also establish a common ground between both him and the clergymen he addresses, and, more widely, with many other Americans who will read the open letter.

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MLK disobeyed unjust laws. The state of America today requires that we not forget that.

Martin Luther King Jr. is a symbol of peace, justice and nonviolence, but he is often misquoted, misunderstood and invoked for nefarious purposes that have nothing to do with his legacy. While many like to speak of King's "dream" and his commitment to peace, part of remembering him means understanding his belief that society has a responsibility to disobey unjust laws. And right now in America, we have become the land of unjust laws and policies — from voter suppression to bans on teaching race and racism.

In his “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ,” King said we have a duty to disobey unjust laws. "I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," he wrote. "Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"

King was unwavering in advocating for civil disobedience to break systems of oppression — disobeying unjust laws in the open, and with love.

What is an unjust law? According to King, it's one that degrades rather than uplifts humanity. Jim Crow segregation statutes were a prime example of unjust laws because "segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality," as King noted. "It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."

A law is also unjust if a numerical majority or a power majority imposes it on a minority yet the majority does not have to follow the law. King used specific examples to make his point.

Internationally, he pointed to Germany, writing: "We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal.' ... It was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany."

And, of course, sitting in a Birmingham jail cell, he spoke of how Alabama's segregation laws that prevented Black citizens from voting were put in place by an undemocratically elected state Legislature (a power majority). He pointed to the fact that not a single Black person was registered to vote even in some majority-Black counties.

While he did not advocate lawbreaking, or as he said "evading or defying the law" like the "rabid segregationist," King was unwavering in advocating for civil disobedience to break systems of oppression — disobeying unjust laws in the open, and with love. After all, he believed that those who passively accepted evil without protesting it are perpetuating it and cooperating with it.

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law," King insisted.

This is a side of him that has been glossed over or even conveniently left out of the conversation. Meanwhile, there are people today who support unjust laws yet invoke King's name when it is convenient. Supporting policies that directly oppose King's dream for America, they cherry-pick his words without context to justify unjust laws.

Nothing about King’s actions or rhetoric — no matter how some may try to twist them — indicates that he would be satisfied with where America is on civil rights today.

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., claim to support voting rights and to celebrate King's vision and honor his legacy of freedom, justice and equality, yet they refuse to change the Senate filibuster rule that would allow for crucial voting rights legislation to pass and preserve multiracial democracy. Sinema and Manchin exemplify the white moderate King described, that "great stumbling block" against Black freedom "who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice" and believes now is not a convenient time for freedom.

In a 1963 interview, King cited the filibuster as stalling the Civil Rights Act of 1964: "I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting."

That same year at the March on Washington, King said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

GOP lawmakers who justified, supported or enabled the Jan. 6 insurrection and appealed to white nationalists — such as Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — have quoted and twisted King's "I Have a Dream" speech to attack critical race theory and deny the existence of systemic racism.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , a Republican, name-dropped King last month in announcing an anti-critical race theory bill called the Stop Woke Act. The legislation would allow private parties, such as students, parents, employees and businesses, to sue schools and workplaces that teach critical race theory. "You think about what MLK stood for," DeSantis said. "He said he didn't want people judged on the color of their skin but on the content of their character."

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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called King "a transformational leader" and "a true American hero" who recognized "great injustice in this world" and took "the necessary steps to right that wrong." Yet Kemp sat under a painting of a slave plantation as he signed a voter suppression law making it a crime to give food and water to people waiting in line to vote.

In Texas — where the Legislature removed King from the state curriculum and ended the requirement to teach that the Ku Klux Klan was morally wrong — Sen. Ted Cruz praised King's fight against racial inequality and injustice . This is the same person who has thrown his unwavering support behind Donald Trump, a president who denigrated Black women , whose administration operated migrant detention centers that one member of Congress compared to concentration camps and who advocated for measures that contribute to voter suppression .

Now is the time to remember that King, though nonviolent, was not a pushover. People in the U.S. are witnessing how the future of the country’s multiracial democracy is at stake because of unjust laws that aim to further ostracize marginalized voices. And we shouldn’t just stand aside and watch it happen. We can use the power of our vote and our voices to hold elected officials accountable. Nothing about King’s actions or rhetoric — no matter how some may try to twist them — indicates that he would be satisfied with where America is on civil rights today.

David A. Love, a faculty member in journalism and media studies at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, is a writer based in Philadelphia. He writes about race, politics and justice issues.

Higher Law and Public Order: Martin Luther King Jr. and Charles Frankel on Civil Disobedience

Sep 4, 2022

By Ben Peterson

A t least since Sophocles’ dramatic telling of the bitter conflict between Antigone and Creon over the burial of Antigone’s traitorous brother, the tension between higher law and the benefits of a public order that promotes law abidingness has been present in Western political thought and experience. The idea of a law above the state, with roots in the Hebraic, Stoic, and Christian traditions, is one of the great ideas in human history. Neither the state and its agents, nor its positive laws, are above the higher law, the law of God. 

Yet the idea of higher law is destabilizing to public order because the former claims authority to distinguish between just and unjust laws within the state, and the individual conscience often discerns the difference. In our day, the tension between higher law and general respect for public order emerges in the politics of race, characterized by protests, riots, calls for root-and-branch reform, and reactive appeals to law and order. With regard to these matters, we face perennial questions of political legitimacy and obligation. When, if ever, should one disobey a law? How should one pursue change in the case of social or legal injustice? Our discourse does not adequately address these questions, but two thoughtful people did in the 1960s, an era similarly marked by civil disobedience and unrest: civil rights activist Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and public philosopher Charles Frankel. The attention to both higher law and public order these thinkers maintain are badly needed today. 

Just and Unjust Laws

King’s “ Letter from a Birmingham Jail ” provides a defense of the nonviolent, direct action strategy he adopted in his civil rights activism. In addition to King’s eloquent portrayal of injustice and stinging indictment of the “white moderate,” his letter addresses the justification for civil disobedience. The full series of letters, including two from a group of eight Christian and Jewish clergymen and King’s response to the second, includes a debate on the nature of law and order. King’s defense of nonviolent direct action is grounded in the Christian natural law tradition, and his demanding theory of civil disobedience gives attention to both the substantive justice of laws and the value of law and order. In a New York Times essay “ Is it Right to Break the Law? ” Frankel argues civil disobedience can be justified even in a democracy, but he also suggests a sense of gravity and moral constraint should attend such action. 

King’s open letter, published on April 16, 1963, defends demonstrations in Birmingham against continued segregation and other injustices against black men and women that, while nonviolent, violated civil law and a court order, resulting in King’s arrest and confinement. King’s movement was successful in attracting media attention and ultimately support for civil rights legislation. Unlike the mayor of Albany, Georgia, Laurie Pritchett, who understood the strategy of nonviolent resistance and avoided excessive force, Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor played into King’s hands by brutalizing protestors and attracting national media attention, as James Patterson notes in a chapter in Race and Covenant (2019). 

“The city’s white power structure,” King argues, has “left the Negro community no alternative” to demonstrations designed to produce “tension” and force negotiations. Demonstrations are the last step in the process of civil disobedience, following “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.” He advocates not “evading or defying the law” but willful acceptance of the penalty for disobeying an unjust law: “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” 

King’s reference to the “rabid segregationist” is noteworthy. In their April 12 letter describing King’s demonstrations as “unwise and untimely” and “strongly [urging] our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham,” the clergymen refer to yet an earlier letter from January 16, an “appeal for law and order and common sense.” Notably, that letter is aimed at opponents of desegregation, written in anticipation of court decisions to desegregate schools and colleges in Alabama. There, the clergymen assert, “defiance is neither the right answer nor the solution,” perhaps responding to Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s inaugural address two days earlier declaring “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” Opponents of desegregation, the feelings and concerns of which the clergymen acknowledge as sincere, should “pursue their convictions in the courts, and in the meantime peacefully… abide by the decisions of those same courts.” 

A consistent thread runs through these clergymen’s messages to desegregation opponents and to King, whom they urge in the April letter to abandon the strategy of demonstrations and allow local black and white leadership to negotiate about racial issues: “We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.” A plausible reconstruction of the clergymen’s argument to King runs as follows: We urged whites to respect law and order and follow court rulings requiring desegregation, even though some find these rulings adverse to their interests and preferences. Blacks seeking change should likewise respect law and order.

King recognizes the concern as legitimate:  

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us to consciously break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” 

King goes on to cite Thomas Aquinas, who defined law as “nothing but a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, made and promulgated by him who has care of the community.” A law not genuinely “of reason for the common good,” not “rooted in eternal law and natural law,” per King’s paraphrasing, is not a law. 

King supports obedience to law, but only true law. How are we to know which laws are just and which unjust? How can we tell, for instance, that segregation does not reflect the natural order, as some of its defenders claimed? According to King, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” Segregation distorts human personality, erecting a superior-inferior relationship between white and black people where none exists. King’s argument rests on a truth claim about equal human worth, a claim the clergymen in fact express in the first of their letters: “That every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges, and responsibilities which belong to humanity.” Pope John Paul II argues on similar grounds in Evangelium vitae that civil laws, even if promulgated in a procedurally just manner, do not bind the conscience if they violate the moral law. 

Critically, the conscientious objector submits to civil authority. King appeals to the example of the Christian martyrs and Socrates who, even as they defied public authority in the name of a higher law, submitted to death. The thrust of King’s argument is to set a high bar for civil disobedience and high standards for its conduct, and to defend a robust conception of law and order: “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” King appeals to a law transcending procedural propriety to justify nonviolent disobedience of unjust laws, while still respecting civil authority. 

The “Grave Enterprise” of Civil Disobedience 

Frankel, evaluating King’s activism, offers a similarly nuanced account of civil disobedience. Ruling out a position that civil disobedience is never justified in a democracy because of the possibility of participation in legislation, he nevertheless gives attention to “another side to the story”:  

We may admire a man like Martin Luther King, who is prepared to defy the authorities in the name of a principle, and we may think that he is entirely in the right; just the same, his right to break the law cannot be officially recognized. No society, whether free or tyrannical, can give its citizens the right to break its laws: To ask it to do so is to ask it to proclaim, as a matter of law, that its laws are not laws.   In short, if anybody ever has a right to break the law, this cannot be a legal right under the law. It has to be a moral right against the law. And this moral right is not an unlimited right to disobey any law which one regards as unjust. It is a right that is hedged about, it seems to me, with important restrictions.

Since the justification for civil disobedience rests on a higher

Dr. Martin Luther King being shoved back by Mississippi patrolmen during the 220 mile ‘March Against Fear’ from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, Mississippi, June 8, 1966. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

law of justice, such disobedience must also be constrained by that same law. Civil disobedience, he argues, is a “grave enterprise” and should only be undertaken in cases where basic moral principles are at stake and no legal path to reform is evident. In other words, Creon has a point as well as Antigone. 

Riots and the Politics of Law and Order

Several waves of urban riots occurred in the second half of the 1960s, beginning with the Watts Riots in August 1965. Riots have since become a recurring feature of the politics of race in America. As Michael Framm writes in Law and Order (2005), Republican politicians including Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan decried the use of civil disobedience as contributing to an atmosphere of disrespect for public authority, crafting a law and order message that resonated particularly with white people. They traced the disorder and rioting to a general lack of respect for law and order that proponents of civil disobedience encouraged by suggesting citizens may choose which laws to follow and which to disregard. Though perhaps overhyped for political gain, this is not an inappropriate concern. King himself acknowledged it with regard to the rabid segregationist, and Frankel counts the possibility of promoting disregard for law and the potential to inadvertently promote violence as among the factors a civilly disobedient activist must consider. 

About a year before his assassination, which precipitated another series of riots, King addressed the riots of the “ long hot summer of 1967 ” in an April 1967 speech at Stanford University entitled “The Other America.” The oft quoted line, that “in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard,” comes after King’s reiteration of his stance that “riots are socially destructive and self-defeating” and “nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice.” King condemns riots and violence, even as he urges attention to the systemic conditions

ostensibly generating them. Some research supports the plausibility of King’s claims that economic and social deprivation contributes to rioting and that “ violent protests ” or riots are not as effective politically as nonviolent civil disobedience. 

The great tension between higher law and public order, between Antigone and Creon, persists unresolved. From both a strategic and a moral perspective, attention to higher law and social reform needs to be balanced with respect for civil authority and public order.

Ben Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University. You can follow him on twitter @ben_2_long. 

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Martin luther king on just and unjust laws.

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. In commemoration, here’s a passage from Dr. King’s famous  Letter from a Birmingham Jail , which he wrote in 1963 to answer clergy who had criticized his willingness to break laws as part of his anti-segregation campaign:

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

The King Center has a link to the original publication, here .

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Examining the Impact of Unjust Laws on Society and Human Rights

Unjust laws have been a persistent issue in societies throughout history, often leading to social unrest and changes in legal systems. Grounded in natural law and human rights concepts, an unjust law is recognized as an illegitimate authority unless it is good and right. While progress has been made recently, shedding light on what constitutes an unjust law and how it impacts individuals and communities is fundamental to fostering social justice and upholding rights.

Several examples of unjust laws can be identified in history, such as racial segregation statutes in the United States or other discriminatory policies that undermine human dignity. Specifically, Martin Luther King Jr. defined an unjust law as a code that is out of harmony with the moral law and degrades human personality. Throughout the years, groups and individuals, including Asian Americans, have fought against unjust laws in the courts, leading to key Supreme Court decisions that altered the landscape of human rights in the United States. To better comprehend the implications of unjust laws and their inherent harm, it is crucial to examine the moral and ethical principles that guide legal frameworks and the balance between majority rule and minority rights.

Understanding Unjust Laws

Historical context.

Unjust laws have been a concern for legal scholars and philosophers throughout history. These laws often conflict with the moral and ethical principles that underpin legal systems, leading to a disconnect between societal values and the laws that govern them. Some historical examples of unjust laws include Jim Crow segregation statutes in the United States, which perpetuated racial segregation and oppression.

Moral Implications

To comprehend the concept of unjust laws, one can look to the words of St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther King Jr. Aquinas posited that an unjust law is a human law not rooted in eternal and natural law. At the same time, King stated that any law that uplifts human personality is just, and any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

In this context, unjust laws are those that:

• Contradict the moral fabric of a society
• Perpetuate inequality and unfair treatment
• Impede the development and expression of a person’s potential and dignity

Addressing unjust laws is crucial for the betterment of society, as laws should ideally function as a framework that upholds justice and equality for all individuals.

Unjust Laws in the United States

Discrimination and inequality.

In the United States, several laws have historically discriminated against or fostered inequality between different racial, ethnic, and social groups. For example, segregation laws, which enforced separation between black and white people in public spaces and services, were a prominent example of unjust laws until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr. famously defined an unjust law as any law that “degrades human personality,” implying that laws targeting specific minority groups or promoting unequal treatment are unjust. Today, many areas still experience discrimination and inequality in education, employment, and housing, which can be exacerbated by systemic racism in various institutions.

Voting Rights

Voting rights have been another area where the United States has passed or maintained unjust laws, such as the widespread use of voter suppression tactics. Following the abolishment of discriminatory voting practices like literacy tests and poll taxes, some states have adopted strict voter ID laws, limited early voting or access to polling places, and purged voter rolls, disproportionately impacting minority and low-income voters. These actions undermine the democratic principles of inclusiveness and equal representation.

Probation and Parole

Probation and parole policies can also reflect unjust practices in the United States. Many states, like Alabama and Mississippi, have implemented strict probation and parole policies, leading to high incarceration rates for minor violations of release conditions. Additionally, the overuse of these policies has strained resources and disproportionately impacted minority communities. The intersection between racial disparities and probation and parole policies highlights the potential for unjust systems within the criminal justice domain.

Fines and Fees

Fines and fees within the US legal system often disproportionately burden low-income individuals and perpetuate cycles of poverty. For example, some states, like Georgia and Florida, have adopted practices such as money bail, which requires individuals to pay a certain amount of money as a condition of pretrial release. This can lead to the prolonged detention of individuals who cannot afford to pay, exacerbating economic inequalities and the overrepresentation of minority groups in the criminal justice system.

Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws , particularly in drug-related cases, have expanded mass incarceration in the United States. These sentencing structures were primarily implemented to increase public safety; however, they have led to many individuals serving lengthy sentences for nonviolent offenses. States like California and Washington have seen the impact of these laws on minority communities, who are disproportionately affected by such policies. Critics argue that mandatory minimum sentences overlook the nuances of individual cases and limit judges’ discretion , thus undermining the fairness and potential for rehabilitation within the criminal justice system.

Famous Unjust Laws in History

Slavery and segregation.

Slavery was an inhumane institution that spanned centuries and impacted millions of people. It was a system where countless individuals were stripped of their freedom and treated as property. The United States experienced a long and challenging journey to abolish slavery, eventually leading to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, officially ending it.

However, the end of slavery did not signify the end of racial discrimination. Segregation laws, often called “Jim Crow” laws, were enacted in Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These laws enforced racial segregation and were based on the “separate but equal” doctrine, which aimed to enforce the submission and oppression of African Americans. One significant figure who fought against these unjust laws was Martin Luther King Jr., who dedicated his life to promoting civil rights and working for equal rights.

History of Oppression

Oppression extends beyond segregation and can be seen throughout history. Various populations have been subjected to discriminatory practices and unjust laws, sometimes leading to genocides and mass atrocities. For example, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany led to the Holocaust, where millions of innocent people – predominantly Jews – were systematically murdered under the pretext of racial purity and national superiority.

Throughout history, ordinary citizens and civil rights activists have taken it upon themselves to break unjust laws to promote change. By breaking these laws, they aim to demonstrate the fundamental injustice of the system and force a reevaluation and reconsideration of the laws.

• Slavery : Inhumane treatment of millions of individuals, eventually abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment.
• Segregation : Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation and submission of African Americans, fought against by figures like Martin Luther King Jr.
• Holocaust : Adolf Hitler’s regime led to the mass murder of innocent people, predominantly Jews, under the pretext of racial purity and national superiority.

Ethics and the Responsibility to Disobey Unjust Laws

Individual and Collective Obligation

Individuals have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, as they may conflict with their personal beliefs and the greater good of society. In these instances, individuals and collectives should recognize the potential harm caused by such laws and take a stand against them. By doing so, they assert their values and beliefs and contribute to fostering a more just and inclusive society.

Moral responsibility extends to obeying just laws and disobeying unjust ones. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “One has a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” This notion stems from the idea that just laws uplift human personality and align with a higher moral authority, as opposed to unjust laws that may degrade human dignity or perpetuate societal inequalities.

Peaceful Disobedience

When choosing to disobey an unjust law, the method of resistance is equally important. Peaceful disobedience, as practiced by leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, involves resisting violence with nonviolence. Methods like civil disobedience draw attention to the injustice at hand and send a powerful message about the commitment to peace and the betterment of society.

In the case of unjust laws, peaceful disobedience may take the form of protests, petitions, or even breaking the law itself while submitting to legal consequences. Such actions can inspire change and create a legacy of ethical resistance for future generations.

By emphasizing the importance of peaceful disobedience, we can ensure that the fight against unjust laws is rooted in principles of peace, equity, and justice, fostering a more empathetic and fair society for all.

State-Specific Unjust Laws

In Kansas, the death penalty remains a contentious issue. Many argue that it is an unjust law due to the possibility of executing innocent people and the disproportionate impact on minority populations. However, it is still in place despite these concerns.

Oregon has received criticism for its civil forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement agencies to seize property from individuals suspected of being involved in criminal activity without proving guilt. This is unjust as it violates due process rights and disproportionately affects low-income individuals. This is because there is a presumption of guilt built into the system. That requires a time-consuming process and expensive attorneys for victims to overcome.

New Jersey’s bail system has been criticized by many for being unjust, as it tends to keep low-income individuals incarcerated for longer periods simply because they cannot afford bail. Recent reforms have begun to address this issue, but work is still to be done.

Arizona’s controversial “Show Me Your Papers” law (SB 1070) has been criticized for promoting racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants. Although parts of the law have been struck down or modified, many argue it remains unjust in treating minority populations.

Although Colorado has made significant progress in abolishing the death penalty, it still faces criticism for treating inmates in solitary confinement. Extended periods of isolation have been deemed inhumane, and many view it as an unjust practice.

Hawaii’s criminalization of homelessness has been widely criticized as unjust. The state has some of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation, and critics argue that criminalizing these individuals perpetuates the problem rather than addressing its root causes.

In Michigan, civil asset forfeiture remains controversial, as law enforcement can seize property without a conviction or even charges being filed. This practice has been criticized for violating due process rights and disproportionately affecting low-income individuals.

Missouri’s juvenile justice system has faced criticism for its treatment of young offenders, particularly using solitary confinement as a means of punishment. Many argue that this practice is unjust, as it can have lasting psychological effects on the youth.

Montana’s criminal justice system faces criticism for its treatment of Native Americans, particularly in regards to racial profiling and discrimination. Critics argue that these practices are unjust and contribute to the overrepresentation of Native Americans in Montana’s prisons.

Fairness and the Path to Justice

Overcoming Unjust Laws

Fairness is an essential component of a just society and is closely related to the ethical standards that guide our actions. In the law context, fairness often refers to the ability to make impartial decisions that cater to the specific circumstances of a case. Achieving fairness in the legal system requires addressing and overcoming unjust laws that may violate human rights or discriminate against certain groups.

One way to overcome unjust laws is by recognizing the standards of rightness and ethics that should govern these rules. Public debates and dialogues can bring attention to unjust laws and generate momentum for change. In democratic societies, citizens can participate in law-making processes, and through advocacy, they can push for amendments, repeals, or replacements of unjust laws.

Advocating for Equity

Advocating for equity is critical in promoting fairness in the legal system, as it focuses on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for all individuals, irrespective of their background or circumstances. Human rights, as a set of principles that protect the dignity and worth of every person, provide a strong foundation for advancing equity.

To advocate for equity, various approaches can be employed:

• Raising awareness through public campaigns or education initiatives to inform people about their rights and existing unjust laws.
• Building coalitions of stakeholders, such as human rights organizations, legal professionals, and community groups, to reform unjust laws.
• Utilizing the power of the media and engaging in strategic communication to amplify the voices of affected individuals and shed light on the consequences of unjust laws.
• Filing lawsuits or supporting litigation efforts that challenge unjust laws in courts, aiming to establish legal precedents that would contribute to systemic change.

Through these efforts, and by consistently promoting fairness and ethics, society can progress towards a more just and equitable legal system that ultimately respects and upholds the human rights of all individuals.

What is an unjust law?

An unjust law can be defined as a code, rule, or regulation inconsistent with the principles of fairness, morality, or human rights. Martin Luther King Jr. provides a concrete example of unjust laws, describing them as codes that a majority inflicts on a minority community without it being binding on the majority itself. These laws can promote inequality, human personality degradation and hurt the affected community.

How can unjust laws be identified?

Unjust laws can often be identified through the following criteria:

• The law promotes inequality or discrimination among different groups or people.
• The law violates basic human rights or the individual’s freedom.
• The law is not based on fairness, morality, or justice.

How can individuals and communities respond to unjust laws?

Historically, individuals and communities have responded to unjust laws through various means, such as:

• Peaceful protests and demonstrations : Organizing rallies or movements to express dissent and demand change.
• Civil disobedience : Intentionally violating the unjust law as a protest, as seen in Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance strategies.
• Legal action : Challenging the law in courts by filing lawsuits against the authorities or appealing the law’s constitutionality.
• Advocacy : Raising awareness about the unjust law, engaging in conversations and debates to change public opinion, and lobbying for legislative change.

Can an unjust law be justified?

The justification for an unjust law can be subjective and depends on the perspectives of different stakeholders. Sometimes, a government may argue that an unjust law serves a larger purpose for maintaining order, security or stability. However, unjust laws cannot be morally or ethically justified in the context of human rights, dignity and equality.

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On Enforcing Unjust Laws in a Just Society

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Jake Monaghan, On Enforcing Unjust Laws in a Just Society, The Philosophical Quarterly , Volume 68, Issue 273, October 2018, Pages 758–778, https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqy013

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Legitimate political institutions sometimes produce clearly unjust laws. It is widely recognized, especially in the context of war, that agents of the state may not enforce political decisions that are very seriously unjust or are the decisions of illegitimate governments. But may agents of legitimate states enforce unjust, but not massively unjust, laws? In this paper, I respond to three defences of the view that it is permissible to enforce these unjust laws. Analogues of the Walzerian argument from patriotism, the Vitorian epistemic argument, and the proceduralist argument found in Rawls, Estlund, and others do not show that law enforcement is usually permitted to enforce unjust laws. Finally, I develop a proceduralist argument for the thesis that law enforcement is permitted to disregard unjust laws. I conclude by considering objections concerning the problem of optimizing society for justice and the problem of law enforcement agents with deplorable moral beliefs.

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The Limits and Dangers of Civil Disobedience: The Case of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Key takeaways.

America’s founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived.

American civil disobedience in the theory and practice of Martin Luther King, is mainly—but not perfectly—in accord with those founding principles.

As King rightly understood, civil disobedience may only be undertaken: (1) for the right reasons; (2) in the right spirit; and (3) by the right people.

Select a Section 1 /0

Introduction

At the heart of the American character, evident since our nation’s birth, is a seeming paradox: Americans take pride in our self-image as a republic of laws and no less pride in our propensity toward righteous disobedience. The “very definition of a Republic,” John Adams remarked, “is ‘an Empire of Laws, and not of men’”—words he wrote in the spring of 1776, even as his compatriots were engaged in an armed uprising that they as a people, with Adams’s own assistance, would shortly thereafter declare to be revolutionary and justified by a law higher than any human law. [REF] Acutely aware of the turbulent history of republics, [REF] America’s revolutionary Founders hoped that Americans would prove exceptional in our lawfulness: lawful both in our obedience and, where need be, in our disobedience.

This idea of rightful disobedience has inspired protests in various degrees and kinds in America ever since the Boston Tea Party, and it continues to inspire such actions even to the present day. Beginning in the mid-20th century, however, a significant modification of the idea has gained legitimacy and prestige in this country and around the world, as many Americans and others have become persuaded that organized disobedience can be not only rightful and, in a higher sense, lawful, but also civil —it can effect a popular uprising against injustice even as it remains in conformity with the requirements of civility and social stability. [REF] Such actions have become increasingly normalized in post-1960s America, as groups protesting a wide range of issues—including, in a partial list, nuclear armaments, abortion, environmental policy, and more recently, alleged misdeeds in the financial-services industry, immigration policy, and alleged police misconduct—have laid claim to the method of civil disobedience.

Broadly defined, “civil disobedience” denotes “a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies.” [REF]  The idea entered America’s public consciousness in 1849 via Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” prompted by Thoreau’s objections to the Mexican War as an instrument of the slaveholding interest. [REF] Its present legitimacy and prestige, however, reflect the influence of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, a movement characterized by its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., as “the greatest mass-action crusade for freedom that has ever occurred in American history.” [REF] Prompted by that movement, America has undergone sea changes in law and in public sentiment regarding race relations and the antidiscrimination idea, and King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” containing his most elaborate justification of the practice of civil disobedience, has become a widely anthologized writing and a fixture in U.S. secondary and collegiate civics education.

To its proponents, led by King, the idea of civil disobedience represents a compelling linkage of morality and efficacy, a happy marriage of moral ends to moral means in the pursuit of social or political reform. Yet, however glorious its historical associations and however appealing it may be on its face, the idea is complicated in its theoretical basis and problematic in its potential practical effects.

The conventional definition of civil disobedience leaves open some basic and challenging questions concerning its justifying causes and its permissible scope and objectives. How, for instance, are we to know that protestors’ claims of injustice are valid and the changes they demand are salutary? How can civil disobedience be explained and justified so as to foreclose the possibility that it could implicitly license uncivil, non-rightful disobedience, or to ensure that even its legitimate usages will not prove corrosive of the rule of law?

To its proponents, the idea of civil disobedience represents a compelling linkage of morality and efficacy, a happy marriage of moral ends to moral means in the pursuit of social or political reform.

Such questions reflect more than merely theoretical concerns. For enthusiasts of rightful disobedience (civil or not), events such as the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement serve as congenial examples—but the participants in the slaveholders’ rebellion of 1861 and the mid-20th century campaign of “massive resistance” to desegregation no less firmly believed their causes to be just. Enthusiasts of civil disobedience proper should likewise recall the eruption of hundreds of urban riots in the years 1965–1968, almost immediately following the civil rights movement’s moment of greatest triumph. Moreover, all should consider the degree to which the successful practice of civil disobedience in the early 1960s, by virtue of its very success, has functioned in the post-Civil Rights era to normalize the practice of lawbreaking as an element of protest and commensurately to erode popular respect for law.

The nation’s experience over the past half-century or so highlights the need for a careful reconsideration of the case for civil disobedience. The discussion that follows is meant to provide such a reconsideration. Its primary finding may be summarized in this lesson: Civil disobedience is justifiable but dangerous. It is justifiable, where circumstances warrant, by the first principles of the American republic and of free, constitutional government, and it is dangerous in that it poses a threat to the rule of law. Consequently, its practice must be confined to rare and exceptional circumstances. The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation.

The judgment as to when circumstances warrant, along with the practice of civil disobedience itself, must be governed by the most careful prudential regulation.

The discussion begins with a consideration of America’s founding principles, focusing in particular on the natural-rights principles summarized in the Declaration of Independence, and then moves to an extended analysis of the arguments of Martin Luther King, Jr. It centers on King primarily because of the near-universal acclaim now accorded King’s “Letter,” which stands as the most influential defense of civil disobedience in our time, if not in all U.S. history. For present purposes, however, King serves as a source of useful lessons in both positive and negative ways.

Complications arise foremost from the fact that King did not hold a unitary and coherent position on civil disobedience. His argument for civil disobedience in the later phase of his career diverges significantly from the relatively moderate argument he presented in his earlier, more successful phase. That earlier argument, the argument presented in the “Letter,” conforms for the most part with the closely circumscribed idea of civil disobedience supported by the Founders’ understanding of natural rights and the rule of law. Yet even King’s earlier argument conforms only imperfectly with the Founders’ principles, and the manner in which it departs from them prefigures his excesses in his later phase.

The disorders that follow from ill-considered notions of civil or rightful disobedience are abundantly and frighteningly evident in the late 1960s and lately resurgent in lesser degrees. To ward off such disorders, it is necessary to sort out the virtues and vices of King’s arguments and to use the virtues in those arguments to light the way back to the sounder understanding of civil disobedience and the rule of law that is implicit in America’s first principles.

Civil Disobedience and America’s First Principles

In his major statement on civil disobedience, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote that the practitioner of civil disobedience does not disregard or undervalue the rule of law but, to the contrary, “express[es] the highest respect for law.” [REF] The rule of law itself, in his reasoning, entails the legitimacy of civil disobedience. A consideration of America’s first principles, as explicated in the political thought informing the American Founding, corroborates King’s view.

Americans’ simultaneous devotion to law and insistence on a right to disobey unjust laws signifies a fruitful tension in American principles, inherent in our foundational idea of the rule of law. “In republican governments,” wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 51, “the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” [REF] Madison followed the teaching of John Locke, who explained in his Second Treatise of Government that “the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power,” which stands as “the supreme power of the common-wealth.” [REF]

The constitutional primacy of the legislative power is the institutional corollary of the rule of law. The legislative must be the primary, supreme power because the alternative to legislative supremacy is subjection to the arbitrary will of another—to the will of an unchecked, potentially despotic prince or ruling class. “Absolute arbitrary power,” Locke maintained, is equivalent to “governing without settled standing laws,” and to be subject to it is to be exposed to the worst evils of a state of war with another. Such exposure is a condition to be avoided at all costs; to escape or avoid it is the primary objective in the formation of political society. [REF]

When Locke said the ruling power “ought to govern” by law, he meant that the law must rule so “that both the people may know their duty … and the rulers too kept within their bounds.” [REF] In Locke’s design and in that of the American Founders, governmental powers are bounded in that they are limited to those specifically delegated by the people who are to be subject to them. In the Founders’ design, of course, the instrument for specifying those delegations is the U.S. Constitution, promulgated as the higher law to which the ruling authority is subject.

As the Declaration makes clear, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution.

For both Locke and the Founders, however, the ultimate law to which human government is subject—including the fundamental legislative authority of constitution-framers and ratifiers—is a law beyond human making, the law of nature. Legitimate, constitutional government can possess only those powers delegated to it by the people who are its constituents, and the people in turn can delegate only powers they rightfully possess under the law of nature. [REF]

It follows that should government attempt to exercise powers beyond those duly delegated to it, it would forfeit its legitimacy and therewith its claim to popular allegiance and obedience. The people in such circumstances hold rights to petition and protest, and should those appeals prove unavailing, to take action to effect such changes as are needed. In the Declaration of Independence, the ultimate recourse is a right, again where circumstances dictate, to full-blown revolution: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [its proper] ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.”

Further, it should be clear that the imperative subjection to the rule of law applies no less to the people themselves, as represented by a ruling majority, than to government. “All … will bear in mind this sacred principle,” Thomas Jefferson noted, that “the will of the majority … to be rightful must be reasonable,” and to be reasonable it must respect the “equal rights” of the minority. [REF] A democracy is as capable of injustice as is a monarchy—and a societal majority as capable of it as a government. An aggrieved minority also has a right to take actions necessary and proper to prevent or correct governmental or societal transgressions. [REF]

At this point arises the issue of civil disobedience. In circumstances justifying greater forms of disobedience, it is reasonable to infer that lesser forms are permissible. Where uncivil or violent disobedience would be rightful but unwise, the lesser means of civil disobedience must likewise be rightful.

As the Declaration makes clear, however, the right to disobey the laws or decrees of unjust government, whether by civil or uncivil means, must be exercised with great caution. Because, as Madison put it, “the latent causes of faction are … sown in the nature of man,” [REF] the doctrine of a right to resist unjust government carries the danger that it might itself be put to unjust uses and thus might operate to undermine the rule of law. To provide against this danger, the Declaration appends to its announcement of the right “to alter or abolish” unjust government a crucial qualifying admonition: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”

Here, in fuller elaboration, is the logic informing the Declaration’s dictates of prudence with respect to actions leading up to and including revolutionary uprising. Revolution, the outermost extreme among acts of protest or resistance, is justified, according to the Declaration, only where all of the following conditions are present:

• government perpetrates or abets clear violations of natural rights, involving clear “abuses” and/or “usurpations”;
• the violations at issue are not isolated or exceptional but occur in “a long train” indicative of a “design” to subject their victims to “absolute Despotism”;
• the violations, persisting despite “repeated petitions” by the injured parties, are reasonably judged to be irremediable by any lawful measures;
• the violations are reasonably judged to be irremediable by any extra-lawful but non- revolutionary measures;
• the violations are reasonably judged to be remediable by revolutionary action.

Informing the Declaration’s admonition of prudence is the rule that revolutionary actions are to be taken only as a last resort—only in acquiescence to “necessity,” as the Declaration states, to the end of correcting injustice. Prudence, in other words, dictates a narrow-tailoring rule, according to which less radical alternative measures are to be preferred, explored, and exhausted prior to the adoption of more radical measures.

These prudential regulations circumscribing the right to revolution apply similarly to acts of civil disobedience. To say that less radical measures are to be preferred to more radical measures is to say that actions outside established legal and political channels are to be taken only where necessary and only so far as necessary. All plausibly viable lawful alternatives are to be attempted prior to the adoption of extra-lawful measures, just as all plausibly viable peaceful means are to be employed prior to any recourse to violent force. Protests against domestic injustices are to be conceived with a view toward preserving or restoring conditions of basic concord. They are to be conceived in the Declaration’s spirit of “justice and consanguinity,” and likewise in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln (“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies”) and of King (“the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community”). [REF] For the same reason, they are to embody the greatest respect for man-made positive laws that circumstances permit.

Protests against domestic injustices are to be conceived with a view toward preserving or restoring conditions of basic concord.

This point concerning the regulation of civil disobedience by the dictates of prudence yields a vitally important corollary: Acts of civil disobedience are not necessarily revolutionary actions and do not necessarily rest on premises that justify revolutionary action. In the definition cited above, the general objective of civil disobedience, to effect a “change in laws or government policies,” encompasses a variety of possible specific objectives, ranging from reform of particular laws or policies to fundamental change in constitutional order. The correction of unjust government may not require radical, thoroughgoing regime change—and in the Declaration’s teaching of prudence, where such revolutionary change is not required, it is not permitted: Actions to “alter” unjust government are to be preferred, where possible, to actions taken to “abolish” it. All lawful alternatives are to be attempted prior to the adoption of extra-lawful measures, and all plausibly viable non-revolutionary measures are to be attempted prior to the adoption of revolutionary measures.

However paradoxical it might appear, America’s founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived.

In the early Civil Rights Era, the paradigmatic acts of civil disobedience were designed to achieve relatively limited, reformist objectives. This fact, along with the profession of nonviolence, helps explain the mainstream legitimacy accorded such acts, but it also means that civil disobedience so conceived may pose a greater threat to America’s republican constitutional order than would a conception of civil disobedience as an inherently revolutionary practice. So far as it is dissociated from the objective of full, fundamental regime change, it would become more widely available and appealing as a means of mere reform, and thus normalized, it would tend to act over time to corrode popular respect for the rule of law. In cases of reformist no less than of revolutionary civil disobedience, it is therefore imperative to define clearly and to circumscribe closely the conditions under which this mode of protest is warranted.

In sum, however paradoxical it might appear, America’s founding principles of natural rights and the rule of law permit the practice of civil disobedience narrowly conceived. It is permissible, on those principles, only where necessary and, in a context of functioning constitutional, republican government, only in exceptional cases. As we will see, American civil disobedience in its most widely admired form, in the theory and practice of King, is mainly—but not perfectly—in accord with those founding principles.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Discovery of Civil Disobedience

From his adolescence to the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., found inspiration in the promise inherent in the Declaration of Independence, although he was acutely aware that for black Americans, that promise had gone unfulfilled. In his very first public speech (as a prizewinner in his high school’s oratory contest), King protested that decades after Emancipation, “Black America still lives in chains.” For the remainder of his secondary and advanced education, he searched for the proper means, as he put it in that initial speech, to “cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom.” [REF]

In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom , King recalled the discoveries that would supply the moral power for the social revolution he envisioned. First was the famous essay by Thoreau, who therein declared:

I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest men only, ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves , were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. [REF]

“During my student days at Morehouse,” King wrote, “I read Thoreau’s essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ for the first time. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to co-operate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. This was my first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.” [REF]

A still more powerful influence was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, whose teaching King discovered as a seminary student a few years thereafter. He attended a talk on Gandhi’s life and teaching and found the message “so profound and electrifying” that he immediately bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi. “As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi,” King reported, “my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform …. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking.” [REF]

Here, for King, are the primary and overarching conditions of morally sound protest:

• Such protest must be nonviolent and must be animated by a spirit of love for the perpetrators of the injustice against which one protests.
• Nonviolent protest so conceived may or may not involve actions in violation of positive law, but where such protest does involve disobedience of law, it must be civil in character.
• In addition to being nonviolent, it must proceed from a devotion to the ideal of moral community.
• It must convey a respect for law as a necessary bond of moral community—including, so far as possible, the laws governing the particular community one means to reform.

As a subclass of nonviolent protest, civil disobedience in King’s understanding is marked by:

• a conscientious refusal to submit to a law deemed unjust;
• a respectful acceptance of the legal consequences (typically jailing) of one’s action; and
• a design to restore or to create a bond of community between the erstwhile victims and perpetrators of the injustice at issue.

King’s awareness of the power of civil disobedience as a protest method quickened in the course of his first nonviolent direct-action campaign, the Montgomery bus boycott, and developed further as he reflected on the sit-in movement initiated by black college students in early 1960. [REF] It reached its full fruition in the pivotal campaign of the entire movement, the Birmingham campaign in the spring of 1963, which occasioned his most extended and influential reflection on the subject.

King’s Classic Exposition of Civil Disobedience: The “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

On Friday, April 10, 1963—Good Friday—King marched purposefully to a Birmingham jail cell, where he was confined for leading a protest march in violation of a local ordinance. That same day, the local newspaper published a public letter addressed to King and his fellow protesters, written by a group of eight Birmingham clergy (seven Christian pastors and one rabbi). The eight were not segregationists; they were moderate proponents of gradual integration. Their letter, entitled “An Appeal to Law and Order and Common Sense,” urged the protesters to desist, arguing that direct-action street protests, especially those involving lawbreaking, were unhelpful as means for repairing race relations in Birmingham. Their appeal provided a perfect occasion for a response from King, who with other movement leaders had been contemplating, since a previous campaign in Albany, Georgia, the composition of a prison epistle to serve as a manifesto for their movement. Thus originated the famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” [REF]

The Objections to Civil Disobedience . In roughly the first third of the letter, King responded to the clergymen’s charge that it was imprudent of him to lead protests at that moment in Birmingham. He then turned to their specific objection to the tactic of civil disobedience. He conceded that it was “certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools … [o]ne may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’” [REF]

The objection was familiar to King. It had been raised not only by moderate southern whites such as the eight clergymen but also by defenders of segregation and by some conservative, moderate, and even liberal black supporters of the cause. In a 1960 televised debate with King, the segregationist James J. Kilpatrick, editor of the Richmond News Leader , remarked that in the controversy over public school integration, “[W]e at the South … were exhorted on every hand to abide by the law … and it is therefore an interesting experience to be here tonight and see Mr. King assert a right to obey those laws he chooses to obey and disobey those that he chooses not to obey.” [REF] Prominent black leaders also objected to the practice of civil disobedience, as Emory O. Jackson, editor of the black newspaper The Birmingham World , Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Conference, and even the great civil-rights attorney (and, subsequently, the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall, all called for fidelity to the law in pursuance of the movement’s objectives. [REF]

Positive or man-made law must conform with higher law—with natural or divine law.

Reduced to its essence, King’s response appears in a simple, if paradoxical formulation: Civil disobedience is not lawlessness but instead a higher form of lawfulness. Drawing upon the higher-law tradition of American and western political thought, King argued that to qualify as law in the proper sense, a given statute or ordinance must conform with the principles of justice. Positive or man-made law must conform with higher law—with natural or divine law. If it conflicts with the higher law, it cannot be binding as law. “‘An unjust law is no law at all,’” King declared, holding it to be both a right and a moral duty to disobey any such measure: “[O]ne has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” [REF]

Beyond such simple formulations, King took seriously the objections Kilpatrick, the clergymen, and others raised. Mindful of the dangers in an excessively permissive justification, he rejected the sort of disobedience that “would lead to anarchy” and explained his own practice in terms that indicate an earnest intention to negate or minimize any anarchic effects. [REF]

As we will see, King failed to provide a rigorous account of civil disobedience, and it is also arguable that his practice of civil disobedience failed to adhere strictly to his principles. Yet despite these shortcomings, his discussion adumbrates several regulating and confining conditions that, properly elaborated, could supply a defensible justification of the practice. In summary, as King presented it in the “Letter,” civil disobedience may only be undertaken: (1) for the right reasons; (2) in the right spirit; and (3) by the right people.

King’s Defense: The Right Reasons . That civil disobedience may be practiced only for the right reasons is first and fundamental among the regulating conditions King suggested. This means that the practitioner of civil disobedience must judge properly in identifying unjust laws as the justification for disobedience. To repeat, King rejected the legal positivism that he imputed (unfairly) to his interlocutors: “We can never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’.... I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.” [REF] He also rejected the error Kilpatrick had ascribed to him, a reliance on conscience to distinguish just and unjust laws that reduces in practice to a mere idiosyncratic choice. It is notable in this regard that the numerous authorities King cited in the “Letter” do not include Thoreau, whose highly individualist idea of conscience, disdain for majoritarian democracy, and pronounced antinomianism King did not share. [REF]

Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason. A just law “is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” An unjust law, he continued, invoking St. Thomas Aquinas, “is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law or natural law.” A law “that uplifts human personality is just,” and one that “degrades human personality is unjust.” Governmentally mandated segregation by color is unjust, because it “distort[s] the soul and damages the personality,” producing in perpetrators and victims false senses of superiority and inferiority. Like slavery in this respect, segregation violates the moral law by “relegating persons to the status of things.” [REF] Such practices and the positive laws that support them do violence to the divine and natural order by denying to some classes of human beings the status of full moral humanity or personhood.

Further, the dignity of human personality signifies the equal dignity of human persons. In King’s account, therefore, justice entails the principle of equality under law, and legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed. An enactment to which lawmakers subjected only others, not themselves, would be no true law, and a similar disqualification would apply to any legislation imposed upon an unjustly disfranchised portion of the population. [REF]

Acknowledging the seriousness of any act of lawbreaking, King recognized his responsibility to explain the criteria for judging the injustice of law and the rightfulness of disobedience. That is not to say that he fully met that responsibility, either in the “Letter” (which he continued to compose and revise after his release [REF] ) or elsewhere in his published work. King’s account of unjust laws in the “Letter” specifically targeted laws in America’s Old South that sustained race-based segregation and disfranchisement, laws inconsistent in principle with any plausible understanding of human moral equality. In that specific application, his explanation of just cause for civil disobedience may be judged successful. He was less successful, however, in clarifying the ideas of personhood and equality that were to supply the basis and the limiting principle for claims of rights and of rights violations.

Justice, King maintained, is manifest in a higher law that is accessible to human reason.

In the “Letter,” King indicated that the sources of his thinking about the moral law were eclectic. They included the Protestant theology of personalism that he had studied as a graduate student, [REF] the philosophy of Aquinas, and the charter of liberty that he described as a repository of America’s “sacred values, the Declaration of Independence.” [REF] Those sources contain overlapping (but not identical) accounts of the moral law and its basis, and King failed to explain precisely what he drew from each, how they were compatible with one another, or their order of priority in his argument. Nor did he address in the “Letter” the implications of his idea of equality for other, more difficult questions pertaining to justice in race relations and to the cause of social and political equality in general—questions controversial even among proponents of equality. Readers receive only very limited guidance as to how they are to judge, amid a wide range of plausible interpretive possibilities, what sorts of laws work to uplift or to degrade human personality.

The result of these shortcomings is that the argument of King’s “Letter,” while strong and clear enough to identify the injustice of racial segregation and disfranchisement, is also abstract and ambiguous enough to expose a broad range of positive laws to charges of injustice—and therefore, potentially, to acts of disobedient protest. One cannot say that King’s explanation of the distinction between just and unjust laws suffices in itself to ward off the charges of anarchism leveled by critics. To establish the compatibility of his practice of civil disobedience with the rule of law, he needed to say more.

Readers receive only very limited guidance as to how they are to judge, amid a wide range of plausible interpretive possibilities, what sorts of laws work to uplift or to degrade human personality.

The Right Spirit . King’s second main regulating condition, that civil disobedience must be undertaken in the right spirit, means foremost that civil disobedience must convey a proper respect for law. In the endeavor to fulfill the law, the would-be reformer must be properly mindful of the danger of destroying it. Civil disobedience must convey a respect for the authority of law as an indispensable and inherently fragile instrument of human governance, no less than for the rational principles from which the law must ultimately derive. Moreover, as his illustrations of unjust law make clear, it must convey a special respect for the authority of democratically enacted law. Against his critics, King insisted that civil disobedience signifies no disrespect but, to the contrary, “the highest respect for law.” [REF] For King, as in the logic of the Declaration, civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary and only so far as necessary to the purpose of reforming an unjust human law.

To practice civil disobedience only where necessary means, in the precise sense, to practice it as a next-to-last resort, short only of uncivil or violent resistance to tyranny. In the Declaration, as previously noted, prudence dictates that action to alter or abolish an unjust order may be taken only by “necessity”—only after “patient sufferance” of “a long train of abuses,” wherein “repeated Petitions” offered “in the most humble terms … have been answered only by repeated injury.”

In the “Letter,” King contended that the history of race in America met and exceeded those criteria. “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.” In the specific locale of Birmingham, anti-black segregation was enforced by the most brutally violent means. “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham,” King reported, “than in any other city in the nation.” In response, “Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.” Nor was there a legitimate opportunity for effecting change by the normal electoral process: “Throughout Alabama all typesof devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters.”

In sum, King argued, “we had no alternative” but to engage in street protests, and—after Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor obtained an anti-demonstration injunction from an Alabama court—no alternative but to engage in civil disobedience. Our impatience, he said, was “legitimate and unavoidable.” The implication is that civil disobedience was undertaken as a last, nonviolent resort and was justified as such. [REF]

The action in Birmingham was King’s first disobedience of a court order, and he found it a very difficult decision. For present purposes, the fundamental questions concern whether his judgments to disobey the court’s injunction and to justify that disobedience by an appeal to natural and divine law rather than U.S. constitutional law are properly characterized as last resorts, taken in response to a genuine necessity. In the “Letter,” King contended that as applied to his direct-action campaign, the ordinance that the injunction was issued to enforce was a violation of the U.S. Constitution, in particular of the First Amendment’s guarantee of rights of peaceful assembly and protest. He added that “federal courts have consistently affirmed” his position that the threat of violence by others—the so-called “rioter’s veto—provides no legally defensible ground for an abridgement of the right of peaceful protest. [REF]

The difficulty in King’s position appears still more challenging in light of the impressive victories equal-rights activists had achieved over the previous two decades by a combination of political pressure and legal challenges. Those victories included:

• Executive Order 8802, issued in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under pressure from A. Philip Randolph, mandating antidiscrimination provisions in government defense contracts;
• Executive Order 9981, issued in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. armed services;
• the U.S. Congress’s enactment of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960; and
• above all, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the culmination of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) campaign of legal challenges to segregation and other discrimination.

So far as it was taken not as a last resort but, to the contrary, amid a period of accumulating successes for the equal-rights cause achieved by scrupulously lawful means, King’s decision to practice civil disobedience in Birmingham appears precipitant, unwarranted by his own criterion of justification. Pursuant to his own insistence on respect for law, it appears that King’s proper initial recourse in Birmingham was the legal channel of judicial appeal rather than disobedience, and that until legal and political channels for reform proved clearly unavailing, his justification for his actions should have remained within the realm of positive, constitutional law.

Two main considerations, however, convinced King of the immediate necessity of civil disobedience in the Birmingham campaign. He believed that among the available channels for such demands, action via the court system was at best dilatory and often ineffectual; it needed reinforcement by direct-action, demonstrative protest. Further, he was convinced that his direct-action movement, having suffered notable setbacks since the initial victory in Montgomery in 1956, had arrived at a crisis moment in Birmingham, such that any significant delay at that juncture would likely prove fatal to the movement as an effective force for reform. Noting that “the injunction method” was proving an effective tool for segregationists in thwarting blacks’ rights to peaceful protest, King therefore decided to reject his father’s advice to submit to the court’s ruling. [REF] “If we obey this injunction,” he concluded, “we are out of business.” [REF]

In Birmingham, the very citadel of southern segregation, the movement would either revitalize itself, King believed, or it would fail and all previous gains would come to naught. Here is the key point: King’s actions in Birmingham and elsewhere were born of a deep impatience, informed, as he wrote in the “Letter,” by a centuries-long history of injustice, including promises made and unfulfilled, that had taught him to equate slow or partial progress with no progress: “Half a loaf is no bread.” [REF] Despite his generally gracious recognition of NAACP efforts, King held that the courtroom victories won by that senior organization, along with the other apparent successes achieved in the electoral branches to that point, would prove practically worthless unless reinforced by further, stronger measures that would be enacted only in response to sustained, intensified pressure. [REF] At bottom, it was this deep mistrust for merely partial, preparatory, or ephemeral gains that moved him to consider civil disobedience a moral imperative.

Recall, too, however, that civil disobedience as King conceived it was to be practiced only so far as necessary. Even where it proves necessary to disobey an unjust law, to disobey the law in its entirety may be unnecessary to the purpose of reform—and indeed may conflict with that purpose. To convey the proper respect for law, one must obey as much of the law as possible. In a general sense, King’s conformity with this precept in the first phase of his activism appears, despite his sometimes eager usage of the language of revolution, in his scrupulous expressions of respect for the principles and institutions established by the American Founders. In its most concrete manifestation, however, the precept of obeying law so far as possible appears in his insistence on submitting to the legally prescribed punishment for disobedience. “In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law,” he explained. “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” [REF]

In this way both the disobedience and the acceptance of the penalty are essential to King’s effort to reform the law by means of moral suasion.

King’s distinction between disobedience that is evasive or defiant and disobedience marked by acceptance of the authority of law is vividly meaningful in context. The former described the practice of “rabid segregationist[s],” while the orderly disobedience of freedom movement protesters exemplified the latter. To gain a full, sympathetic understanding of King’s position, it is necessary, as King scholar Jonathan Rieder has commented, to think concretely about the distinction: “In Birmingham, the lawbreakers [castrated] a black man; they bomb[ed] ordinary families …. Bull Connor, the chief lawman, colluded with the Klan so they could carry out bloody mayhem on Freedom Riders.” Given the context, it would seem a gross distortion of perspective to see in King’s and his fellow protesters’ actions a danger to law and order comparable to that posed by pro-segregation extremists. [REF]

The insistence on accepting the prescribed penalty for disobedience was integral to King’s larger design of presenting to the broad American public the sharpest possible contrast between the characteristically lawful practitioners of disobedience and the lawless defenders of the local statutes and ordinances. It was integral, in other words, to his larger design of exposing the stark conflict between local positive laws sustaining racial subordination and the moral laws of nature. To reform the city’s—and the region’s and the country’s—laws, it was necessary to expose that conflict, and to expose that conflict it was necessary to demonstrate to a national public the effect of those laws in inflicting brutality and imprisonment on a class of decent and law-abiding people, who would demonstrate those qualities most visibly by their voluntary acceptance of the penalties for disobeying the city’s law. In this way both the disobedience and the acceptance of the penalty are essential to King’s effort to reform the law by means of moral suasion.

The Right People . Conceiving of civil disobedience as a willing submission of self to a higher discipline, King made clear that this mode of protest carried a high risk. He noted the silence in the room when, at a meeting of supporters to finalize plans for the Birmingham campaign, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham remarked, “You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live.” King meant quite literally his statement in the “Letter” that in direct-action protest, his group “would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.” His praise for the protestors’ “sublime courage” was no mere exercise in boosting morale. [REF]

The dangers were sufficiently great that the average person, naturally concerned for the preservation of life and limb, could not be presumed willing or able to brave them. Something similar was true with respect to the indignations and provocations to which protestors would be subjected, which could be expected often to surpass the limits of the average person’s patience. The practice of civil disobedience required a special kind of person—meaning, in most cases, a specially trained kind of person. “Mindful of the difficulties involved,” King wrote, “we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We started havingworkshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves the questions: ‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?’ ‘Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?’” [REF]

The training that protesters received was rigorous in itself, but the moral formation King judged requisite to nonviolent protest and properly civil disobedience required more than any relatively brief workshop could produce. What sort of person, marked by what sorts of qualities, volunteers for such training in the first place? A concern about injustice was a minimum condition, but King insisted that civil disobedience must be animated also by an ethic of love and service for other human beings, including perpetrators as well as primary victims of injustice.

Indicative of the moral qualities required are the tenets of the “Commitment Card” the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) required volunteers to sign:

I hereby pledge myself—my person and body—to the nonviolent movement. Therefore I will keep the following ten commandments: 1. Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus. 2. Remember always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory. 3. Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. 4. Pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free. 5. Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free. 6. Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy. 7. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world. 8. Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart. 9. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health. 10. Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration. [REF]

It is meaningful, if unsurprising, that the SCLC required of protesters a commitment suffused with the moral spirit of Christianity. Granted, the commitment pledge did not quite signify a religious test for participation; it required meditation on Jesus’s teaching, not worship of Jesus, and it required prayer to a God of love, not necessarily to the God Christians recognize. [REF] Nonetheless, it is significant that King stipulated, as a requisite of civil disobedience, that the practitioner must possess a distinctive set of religiously grounded moral qualities, including a firm commitment to a higher, natural and divine law and a faith that suffering in the service of that law can be redemptive for oneself and others. He proudly described his movement as “a mass-action crusade,” but by insisting on proper training and character formation, he made clear that not simply anyone was suitable for direct-action protest and civil disobedience: “Not all who volunteered could pass our strict tests.” [REF]

King’s Achievement . Judged by its main objectives of reforming the law and strengthening the bonds of moral community, King’s direct-action protest movement of the 1950s and early 1960s appears to have been a resounding success. The Birmingham campaign, epitomized by the now-canonical “Letter,” is credited with generating an irresistible momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The subsequent campaign in Selma, organized on the same principles and initiated by its own act of civil disobedience, generated a similar energy for the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those two statutes constitute the most ambitious and effective civil- and political-rights guarantees in the nation’s history, and their enactment coincides with the onset of a profound reformation in Americans’ moral sentiments about race relations.

Admirers of King and the movement might contend further that these successes were achieved by generally peaceful means, without effecting lasting ruptures in civil order in the southern venues in which protesters campaigned. Critics had predicted that the tactics of direct action and civil disobedience would degenerate into uncivil disobedience, marked by lawlessness and violence. Those evils did ensue—but as King emphasized, they came in the main from the actions of segregation’s defenders, not from its protesters. The protests he led and supported did not incite violence so much as they exposed pre-existing violence to the view of a national public. By attaching to the practice of civil disobedience the regulatory conditions that he described in the “Letter,” King helped contain disorders that might otherwise have so expanded as to scuttle the possibility of meaningful reform. By this means, his admirers might plausibly argue, King acknowledged the seriousness of critics’ major concern and effectively addressed it.

Nonetheless, critics of King’s arguments and actions relative to civil disobedience even in this more successful phase of his career have a point in warning of their tendency to propagate disrespect for law and an enthusiasm for (purportedly) righteous disobedience. It is not clear that a patient reliance on the judicial process in the Birmingham campaign would have doomed the direct-action movement to failure, as King feared. One might also discern in King’s eagerness to deploy the language of revolution and natural rights in preference to that of constitutional law a certain zeal for revolution at odds with his insistence on respect for positive law. One might further suggest that even in the first phase of his activism, King’s actions and his rhetoric did not fully accord with the strict criteria for civil disobedience that he adumbrated in the “Letter.” Critics have a point in charging that King bore a measure of responsibility for the eruptions of lawlessness that would begin to sweep U.S. cities from 1965–1968, even as the direct-action movement was achieving its greatest triumphs. [REF]

The details of his second-phase proposals varied over time, but the general idea was to call for a new federal antipoverty initiative, unprecedented in size and scope.

For his own, very different reasons, King, too, judged the first phase of his movement as only a partial and mixed success. In this respect, his dissatisfaction with the “half a loaf” gained in previous decades applied also to his movement’s accomplishments, which marked, in his view, not the end of its work but only “the end of the beginning,” as President Lyndon Johnson said in anticipation of the Voting Rights Act. [REF]

In the years that followed, King would radicalize his calls for civil disobedience.

Civil Disobedience Radicalized

“With Selma and the Voting Rights Act,” King wrote in his final book, Where Do We Go From Here? “one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end.” He announced the advent of a second phase, targeting conditions in impoverished urban ghettoes across the country and aiming at “the realization of [socioeconomic] equality” across lines of class and color. [REF] The details of his second-phase proposals varied over time, but the general idea was to call for a new federal antipoverty initiative, unprecedented in size and scope. Dissatisfied with Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” King called for a multifaceted “real war on poverty” designed to provide “jobs, income,” and housing for all in need of them: in sum, “a new economic deal for the poor,” consisting in “a massive, new national program.” [REF]

To hasten the achievement of his second-phase objectives, King renewed and intensified his call for civil disobedience. In the fourth of his Massey Lectures, [REF] delivered in late 1967 and published under the title, The Trumpet of Conscience , he stated:

There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way …. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. There is a fire raging now for the Negroes and the poor of this society …. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. [REF]

Even after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, King believed, America remained in a state of social emergency, “a desperate and worsening situation” even more serious than the country had faced in 1963. King held further acts of civil disobedience to be warranted because he regarded prevailing conditions of poverty and rising discontentment as effects of a set of “terrible economic injustices” no less grievous and even more widespread than the wrongs of the Jim Crow regime: “In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income …. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. Now, millions of people are being strangled that way.” [REF]

Violent in itself, that injustice was in King’s view also violent in its emerging effects—above all in the rioting that began in Watts just days after the Voting Rights Act became law and spread, in the two years thereafter, to hundreds of cities across the U.S. As was the case in Watts, the riots were often precipitated by disputes involving police—but evidence suggests that neither charges of police brutality nor discontentment at socioeconomic deprivation was the predominant cause. Anger at the brutality inflicted upon King and the southern protesters was, however, widespread among northern blacks. Whatever the broader causes, the Watts riots left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. Two years later, a riot in Detroit wrought even greater destruction. [REF]

The failure of federal authorities to adopt antipoverty measures on the schedule—and in the degree and kind he desired—necessitated, in King’s view, a new round of protests.

King was profoundly alarmed at these events and at the corresponding emergence of the “black power” faction that rejected his calls for nonviolent means and integrationist ends. Believing that only prompt remedial action by the federal government could bring peace to the cities, he amplified his demands for the enactment of his phase two, antipoverty measures as “an emergency program.” Congress’s failure to enact that program angered him; he called it a provocation and ascribed it to a “white backlash” indicative of a broader and deeper racism among whites than he had previously estimated. The failure of federal authorities to adopt antipoverty measures on the schedule—and in the degree and kind he desired—necessitated, in King’s view, a new round of protests. He reiterated his calls for nonviolent action, including civil disobedience, but this time in a significantly modified form. In his first Massey Lecture, he declared:

Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger society; there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point … Mass civil disobedience as a new stage of struggle can transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the larger society, but not wantonly destructive. [REF]

King called this modified conception a more “mature” form of civil disobedience. A closer analysis makes clear, however, that it signifies a radical departure from the practice he defended in the “Letter.” Whereas in that earlier account he explained that civil disobedience must be practiced only for the right reasons, in the right spirit, and by the right people, the “mass civil disobedience” he advocated in 1967 effects decisive modifications of all three of those regulating conditions.

Reasons . King characterized poverty and unemployment as deprivations of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and he conceived of poverty as a form of segregation. [REF] He contended that the social and economic rights he demanded are no less firmly rooted in America’s first principles than are the civil and political rights for which he campaigned in his movement’s first phase. These are untenable claims.

The difficulty appears first in the fact that, as King at times acknowledged, his expansive, second-phase conception of rights was rooted in principles outside America’s constitutional tradition: “We have left the realm of constitutional rights,” he remarked in Where Do We Go From Here? “and we are entering the area of human rights.” [REF] To say that King’s later claims about rights fall outside America’s constitutional tradition is not necessarily to discredit them, but by construing poverty itself as indicative of injustice, irrespective of any action or inaction by those who suffer it, he implicitly placed rights on an infirm foundation. He adopted an idea of rights grounded in indefinite human needs rather than in definite and distinctive human faculties, thus leaving rights claims with no clear foundation or limiting principle even as he endorsed a great expansion of those claims. [REF]

By adopting this controversial and problematic conception of rights, King effectively discarded his earlier regulating condition that civil disobedience may be undertaken only for the right reasons, clearly identifiable as such in the light of the natural law philosophy exemplified in the U.S. constitutional tradition.

King characterized poverty and unemployment as deprivations of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and he conceived of poverty as a form of segregation.

Spirit . King’s later conception departs, too, from his earlier insistence that civil disobedience must be practiced in a spirit of respect for law, respect for democratic governance, and redemptive good will, manifesting a desire for reconciliation with one’s erstwhile adversaries.

A corollary of King’s earlier position that civil disobedience may be practiced only where necessary is that such disobedience should cease as soon as possible—i.e., as soon as the necessary reforms are achieved or lawful, political avenues to their achievement become available. Mindful of the same socioeconomic conditions that alarmed King, Bayard Rustin (King’s longtime adviser and perhaps the movement’s shrewdest tactician and organizer) called for activism within the regular democratic processes of petition, electoral persuasion, and voting; he endorsed “a strategic turn toward political action and a temporary curtailment of mass demonstrations.” [REF] By failing to heed Rustin’s advice, King departed from his previously stated principles regarding civil disobedience. At least momentarily, he lost faith in the democratic processes the Voting Rights Act had newly reformed.

King departed from his previously held regulatory principles in another, related respect. Note that in his call for a more “mature” form of civil disobedience, he emphasized the exercise of “force” aimed at interrupting society’s functioning “at some key point.” [REF] In the “Letter,” King explained civil disobedience as a form of moral suasion, designed “to arouse the conscience of the community.” [REF] The earlier model of civil disobedience thus contrasts sharply with the model King later proposed, which was not demonstrative or persuasive in character but instead disruptive and coercive and, moreover, targeted not unjust laws but instead just laws necessary to the ordinary functioning of society. The latter sort of action is unintelligible as a claim upon conscience. To the contrary, it signifies a purposeful encroachment on others’ rights and interests as members of civil society.

King’s illustrations of the sort of actions he envisioned are useful in clarifying the distinction. His first illustration was offered as a hypothetical, though it has since become a common method in actual protests. Traffic laws are not in themselves unjust, King allowed, but their operation may be legitimately suspended for emergency purposes. The disruption of traffic, infringing on a right of access to a public road, is in his view a permissible means of extracting a public concession to an aggrieved group’s demands. He offered a second illustration in the form of a direct suggestion. “[We] will move on Washington,” he resolved, “determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action …. A delegation of poor people can walk into a high official’s office with a carefully, collectively prepared list of demands. And if that official [is nonresponsive], you can say, ‘All right, we’ll wait.’ And you can settle down in his office for as long a stay as necessary.” [REF]

In advocating this radicalized form of civil disobedience, King contended that those who perceive a serious societal injustice have the right to disobey just laws to the end of reforming unjust laws or policies. They have the right, by his logic, to violate the rights of innocent parties (travelers, office workers, or public officials, along with their clients, patrons, and constituents). So understood, King’s later idea of civil disobedience is properly if bluntly characterized as a form of extortion clothed in moral purposes. It is plainly at odds with his insistence on the correspondence of moral ends and moral means. [REF] It is no less at odds with his insistence that the ultimate objective of direct-action protest and civil disobedience is reconciliation between the erstwhile victims and perpetrators of injustice, enabled by a “change of heart” in the latter. [REF]

King’s later idea of civil disobedience is properly if bluntly characterized as a form of extortion clothed in moral purposes.

People . Finally, as for the principle that civil disobedience may be practiced only by people of properly formed character, King’s call for an expanded and disruptive campaign of civil disobedience did include a training period. Describing his plan to recruit “three thousand of the poorest citizens” from various urban and rural areas to participate in a “Poor People’s March on Washington,” he indicated that “this nonviolent army, this ‘freedom church’ of the poor, will work with us for three months to develop nonviolent action skills.” [REF]

Even so, King’s remarks relative to the character and motivations of this newly recruited “army” suggest that here, too, he departed significantly from his earlier account. Although the enlistees in that new army might receive training similar to what their first-phase predecessors received, the fact remains that the latter, drawn substantially from a population of southern churchgoers imbued with a Christian ethic of love and service, were beneficiaries of a moral heritage that many of those solicited for the later phase did not share. Attempting to find virtue in the difference, King offered a troubling description of the prospective participants in his second-phase project, highlighting not their moral discipline but their social desperation: “The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose.” [REF]

In a similar vein, King attempted to find even in the riots themselves support for his contention that the disaffected urban poor constituted a promising new class of potential pilgrims to nonviolence. Among “the most striking features of the city riots,” he argued, was that “the violence, to a startling degree, was focused against property rather than against people.” The overwhelming majority of people killed during the riots, he went on, were protesters killed by law enforcement officers. In those facts, he discerned an “unmistakable pattern,” in which “a handful of Negroes used gunfire substantially to intimidate, not to kill; and all of the other participants had a different target—property.” On closer examination, then, the riots were actually characterized by a “restraint” that gave cause for hopefulness. King concluded: “If one can find a core of nonviolence toward persons, even during the riots when emotions were exploding, it means that nonviolence should not be written off for the future as a force in Negro life.” [REF]

King’s apologetic discussion of the rioting raises troubling questions. What defensible basis is there for his finding of “a core of nonviolence” in acts of intimidation against persons and of violence against property? Is there any tenable moral distinction between the intimidation he equivocally decried and the disruption and coercion he advocated as elements of his “mature” form of civil disobedience? On what ground could he continue in his second-phase arguments to affirm the moral imperative of nonviolence, given his justification of coercion? On what ground could he locate the natural rights of persons, given his denigration of the property right—a right affirmed in classical natural-rights philosophy as a direct corollary of the liberty of the person? [REF] Finally, in his second-phase advocacy of intensified civil disobedience—justified, he claimed, by the force of the “white backlash” and the depth of white racism in America—what remained of the ethic of redemptive love that animated his first-phase argument?

King attempted to find even in the riots themselves support for his contention that the disaffected urban poor constituted a promising new class of potential pilgrims to nonviolence.

To such questions King offered no compelling answers. The conclusion seems inescapable that in his desperate zeal to add rapid socioeconomic uplift to his movement’s previous victories in securing civil and political rights, King again neglected a piece of wise counsel from Rustin, who observed: “There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement which would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that absence of power also corrupts.” [REF] Especially in his final two years, King overestimated his ability to govern the anger of the urban poor that he purposely assisted in arousing. He lent his moral authority to a radicalized form of civil disobedience that was more likely to sow disrespect than respect for law and more likely to foster division than moral reconciliation.

“One of the great glories of democracy,” King remarked at the outset of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, “is the right to protest for right.” [REF] Americans in the exercise of that right gave birth to a new and singular republic, and the same right endures as an endowment by nature and a precious national heritage. Of this venerable right, the practice of civil disobedience is extolled by its proponents as an ingeniously conceived variant—a finely calibrated method of protest, at once safe and effective—not so radical as needlessly to unsettle an established order and just radical enough to remediate governmental or societal injustices.

This right, like every other, however, comes with correlative responsibilities, among which the most fundamental are responsibilities to law and republican government. Above all, because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers’ lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. The practice of civil disobedience must preserve or enhance respect for law and therewith for constitutional republicanism. Further, because the rule of law is not only indispensable to free and just government but also inherently fragile, the practice of disobedient protest can only qualify as properly civil if it is circumscribed with the greatest care.

That sort of care is especially needed at the present time. A half-century after the Civil Rights movement, an upsurge in disobedient protest has moved some observers to proclaim a new era of civil disobedience in America, even as the boundary between civil and uncivil disobedience in this latest wave of protests appears increasingly permeable. [REF]

This upsurge appears unlikely soon to abate. Americans’ trust in government has fallen to historic lows as our partisan divisions and animosities have intensified; [REF] large and increasing numbers of Americans are convinced, for one set of reasons or another, of the illegitimacy of the ruling order. Moreover, a broad national consensus now glorifies the Civil Rights movement as a 20th century American revolution, conferring moral prestige on its signature methods of direct-action protest and civil disobedience. Attempts to emulate those methods have naturally followed, and the multiplication of such attempts must heighten the likelihood of a corrosive effect on the public’s attachment to law. Locke’s prudent admonition, “the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people,” [REF] applies equally well to the danger even the best protest leaders or movements pose to the rule of law.

Because the right to civil disobedience is intelligible only as a corrective of rulers’ lawlessness, it must not itself foster lawlessness. The practice of civil disobedience must preserve or enhance respect for law and therewith for constitutional republicanism.

Most worrisome in the recent waves of purportedly civil disobedience is their participants’ disregard for the divided legacy of the Civil Rights movement. It is crucial to bear in mind that as the movement proceeded from its first to its second phase, two very different models of civil disobedience emerged. Despite its shortcomings, the initial model, epitomized in King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” was marked by a high degree of moral discipline, by professions of conscientious respect for law and for America’s founding principles, and, not by mere coincidence, a remarkable degree of success in achieving its practical objectives. The later model was altogether more problematic: less respectful of law, of the moral sentiments of the American public, and of democratic government, and less grounded in the American tradition of natural-rights liberalism.

In the recent wave of protests and calls for protest one can find semblances of the first approach, but those more closely resembling the second model have predominated. Recent protesters have been generally heedless of the obligation to compose well-reasoned, empirically careful, rights-based arguments to support the justice of their cause, and their protests have consisted largely in efforts at disruption and coercion rather than persuasion. Moreover, the most prominent eruptions in the past decade of what supporters persist in calling civil disobedience, including the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the anti-Trump “Resistance,” [REF] have in fact featured a volatile mixture of acts of nonviolent and violent disobedience. Those two facts are related: The disruptive form of disobedience, even if it qualifies as civil at the outset, is likely to issue in acts of uncivil or violent disobedience, because by endorsing acts of coercion and rights violation, it undermines the rationale for a principled commitment to civility or nonviolence.

When proponents of this lately predominant form conflate King’s two models, [REF] therefore, they undermine the justification for civil disobedience altogether. Against their own purposes, they corroborate warnings by critics to the effect that acts of purportedly civil disobedience are likely to turn lawless and violent. [REF]

Recent protesters have been generally heedless of the obligation to compose well-reasoned, empirically careful, rights-based arguments to support the justice of their cause, and their protests have consisted largely in efforts at disruption and coercion rather than persuasion.

In sum, at the present moment in American public life, the practice of purportedly civil disobedience is becoming increasingly normalized even as its proper basis, tactics, and objectives are subject to increasing confusion. Such a condition poses a clear danger to the rule of law. As for a corrective response, the optimal approach would ultimately involve looking beyond lately canonical discussions of civil disobedience and returning to the position grounded in America’s first principles. The Declaration of Independence, as explained above, contains clear criteria for judging just and unjust government, along with a summation of dictates of prudence that yield an endorsement of civil disobedience only in exceptional and compelling circumstances.

The same conditions, however, that recommend a return to the Declaration’s tightly circumscribed justification may also render such a response presently unavailable. Amid these conditions, a reconsideration of King could serve as a useful first step—drawing our guidance from the best , not the whole, of King’s thinking regarding civil disobedience. Although his zeal for prompt reform moved him at times to transgress his own prudential regulations, in his earlier phase King showed himself to be a more sober and careful exponent of civil disobedience than the despairing, radicalized King of the second phase, advocate of the disruptive, disorderly mode of disobedience lately prevalent. To read his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” with particular attention to this conservative dimension of his argument may therefore serve to initiate a renewed and enhanced public appreciation of the rule of law, both of its basis and its centrality to the health of America’s constitutional republic.

— Peter C. Myers was the 2016–2017 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation, and is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He is the author of Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) and Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism (University Press of Kansas, 2008).

Visiting Scholar, 2016-17 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought

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• > Ethics and Law
• > Unjust laws and legal systems

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• Part I Lawyers, ethics, and the law
• 1 Defining the problem
• 2 Justifying principles of professional ethics
• 3 The adversary system
• 4 The nature of law and why it matters
• 5 Legal obligation and authority
• 6 Unjust laws and legal systems
• Part II The many roles of lawyers

6 - Unjust laws and legal systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2014

Consider the predicament of Captain Vere in Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd . Billy, the protagonist, is a good but simple sailor who is wrongfully accused by the malevolent petty officer Claggart of conspiring to mutiny. Suffering from a speech impediment and thus unable to speak in his own defense, Billy strikes Claggart and kills him. Vere believes he has no choice but to convene a court martial to consider the capital charge against Billy of striking a superior officer during wartime. Many readers of Billy Budd are not aware that the character of Captain Vere was modeled on Melville’s father-in-law, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who was renowned for his opposition to slavery yet was the author of several judgments enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. Melville clearly means his readers to see Vere as a wise, humane, decent officer. At the same time, he has Vere represent the harshness and rigidity of the law in contrast with considerations of justice. Billy was innocent, framed by Claggart, and Vere knew of his innocence, but Vere nevertheless persuades the other officers to order Billy’s execution by reminding them that leniency might encourage mutiny in the Royal Navy during wartime.

Like the fictional Captain Vere, the real Justice Shaw was a righteous man, yet he saw no alternative to following the law and sending fugitive slaves back to their owners. In Justice Shaw’s eyes, the Fugitive Slave Act, however unjust, was a regrettable necessity in a nation sharply divided over the question of slavery; it was a political compromise that averted the far worse outcome of civil war (which, of course, came in the end anyway). Agree or disagree with Justice Shaw’s reasoning, most historians see him as a decent person faced with a genuine conflict of obligations, not an Eichmann-type official mindlessly serving as a cog in a monstrous machine. Like Captain Vere, Justice Shaw believed he had an obligation to follow the law, despite the clear injustice of the cases before him.

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• Unjust laws and legal systems
• W. Bradley Wendel , Cornell University, New York
• Book: Ethics and Law
• Online publication: 05 October 2014
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107337114.008

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What if laws are unjust, about this resource.

Download this Lesson Plan , including handouts as a pdf.

Goals/Rationale In this lesson, students read and analyze segregation ordinances, and learn how Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists challenged these unjust laws through peaceful protest and civil disobedience during the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. The lesson highlights the vital role that young people played in the campaign.

Essential Question: How have citizens challenged unjust laws through non-violent actions?

Students will be able to:

• cite examples of segregation ordinances and evaluate why they were discriminatory;
• describe/summarize the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham;
• read and analyze primary sources on this event, comparing with a secondary source; identify First Amendment principles underlying civil rights marches and other peaceful protest;
• define “civil disobedience” and how it was employed by Martin Luther King Jr. and others to challenge segregation laws.

Sources and Historical Background

(All materials are included in the downloadable lesson plan . See below under “Additional Info” for background on source materials.)

• “Birmingham’s Segregation Ordinances”
• Signs of Segregation”
• “Project C” introductory essay to the chapter on Project C, the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham (also included with downloadable lesson plan)
• Telegram from Wyatt Tee Walker to the President on the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, April 13, 1963 [Project C, “Creating Project C” subchapter]
• “Martin Luther King Jr. on Just and Unjust Laws” – excerpts from a letter to fellow clergymen written from Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963 (included with downloadable lesson plan)
• Front-page news photos of the demonstrations in Birmingham, May 4, 1963 edition of The Charleston Gazette [Project C, “Confrontation” subchapter]
• Statement by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the Birmingham demonstrations, May 3, 1963 [Project C, “Confrontation” subchapter]
• Justice Department telephone log with notes on a call from Joe Dolan, May 17, 1963 [Project C, “The Agreement” subchapter]
• Written Document Analysis Worksheet

The lesson begins with an introductory discussion in which students consider what “a government of laws” means at the local level and how citizens might respond to laws and regulations they find to be objectionable or unfair. Students then examine and analyze racial segregation ordinances from Birmingham, Alabama along with related photos. After reading a brief narrative of the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham, they read excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and discuss his rationale for civil disobedience to protest unjust segregation laws. They also examine primary sources highlighting young people’s participation in the Birmingham campaign. As a culminating activity, students compose a letter from the standpoint of a young demonstrator who must explain to the school principal why he or she was justified in skipping classes to join the protest march.

1. Introductory discussion: “A government of laws and not of men.”

a) As a prompt, write the above quote on the board. This phrase was included by John Adams in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Part I, Article 30) which he helped to write in 1779 and which served as a model for the US Constitution.

Question: What do these words mean to you and how do they relate to the kind of government we have in the United States?

Record students’ responses. They should be able to connect Adams’ words with their knowledge of America’s war for independence and the colonials’ sense of outrage at the unjust, arbitrary rule of the King. They should also be able to draw connections with the concept of checks and balances and separation of powers.

b) Briefly review with students how the legislative power is exercised at federal and state levels before focusing in on the local level, along the following lines:

Questions: Who makes the laws in [name of your city or town]? Can you name some parts of the community which these local elected officials are responsible for regulating (e.g., schools, traffic, recreational facilities)? Give an example of a law or regulation for each area. Can you think of any local law or regulation that some people might find to be annoying or objectionable? (Should they still obey it?) If a majority of local elected officials happened to be biased against, or in favor of, a particular group within the community and passed laws reflecting that bias—what might concerned citizens do? Which sections of the US Constitution could they cite to challenge the discriminatory laws?

c) To follow up on the last question, have students review the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment (Section 1) of the US Constitution. Ask them to copy down the passages they think are most relevant to challenging unjust laws, and why. Text of both amendments can be found on the National Archives website:

• The Bill of Rights
• Amendments 11-27

2. Examine/analyze racial segregation ordinances and related photos.

a) Explain to students that local laws are often known as “ordinances”—and that communities throughout the South and many areas of the North had ordinances years ago which were designed to enforce racial segregation.

Question: What does the word “segregation” mean?

Record students’ responses. Then distribute the handout on “Birmingham’s Segregation Ordinances.”

b) After locating Birmingham on a map, have students take turns reading the five ordinances aloud. Ask them to summarize each one in the form of a rule, using ten words or less. The heading of Chapter 23, Sec. 597—“Negroes and white persons not to play together”—can be used as an example. List the rules on a large sheet of paper.

c) Hand out the “Signs of Segregation” sheet. Explain that these photos were not taken in Alabama but in other states which had similar local laws during the same time period. Ask students if they can match any of the photos with one of the ordinances.

Note: The separate movie theater entrance for “Colored” matches with the third ordinance, as do the “Colored” and “White” bus station waiting rooms. The “White Ladies Only” restroom illustrates the fourth ordinance. (Sharp-eyed students may also notice the “White Men Only” restroom sign below the stairs outside the movie theater.) The outdoor drinking fountain with sign saying “Colored” doesn’t match with any ordinance in the handout. For this one, ask students to make up a rule that would apply, as above, and add it to the list.

d) With the list of rules about segregation in view, hand out a sheet with the following questions. Give students time to respond in writing.

Questions: Who do you think created these ordinances, and why? Today, most people recognize such laws as being extremely discriminatory. In what ways are they unfair? Which of the ordinances do you think had the greatest impact on people’s lives—and why? How might African Americans have challenged the segregation laws?

Students’ responses to the last question will obviously vary depending upon how much or how little they have read about the Jim Crow era, and about what consequences there could be for African Americans who violated either written or unwritten rules of conduct.

e) Ask the class if they have any additional insights about the meaning of segregation. (Add to the definitions recorded earlier.)

Optional activity:

Draw students’ attention back to the last paragraph on page 2 of the segregation ordinances, which deals with buses and other public transport. Ask if anyone can say how Rosa Parks reacted when she was told to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 to make room for a white passenger, and what happened afterward. By grade 7, many students will have some familiarity with this historical episode and with the Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked by Mrs. Parks’ arrest. A “Teaching With Documents” web page with the arrest record of Rosa Parks can be accessed from the National Archives website . The web page features a diagram of the bus showing where Mrs. Parks was seated and a brief narrative of event, including the young Martin Luther King Jr.’s emergence as a civil rights leader during the bus boycott.

3. Read/summarize a narrative of the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham (“Project C”).

a) To learn how people challenged segregation in Birmingham give students the reading on “Project C” as a homework assignment. Note that this essay, like the other chapter introductions in 1963: The Struggle for Civil Rights, is written in the present tense in keeping with the microsite’s you-are-there approach.

b) As a lead-in to the following activity, ask students to summarize what they learned about Project C from the reading.

4. Read and analyze “Martin Luther King Jr. on Just and Unjust Laws” – excerpts from a letter written in the Birmingham City Jail.

a) The essay stated that Martin Luther King Jr. and others were arrested on April 12, 1963 and that he spent more than a week in jail. Make it clear to students that King deliberately violated a court-ordered injunction against further demonstrations. Write this question on the board: How could Dr. King justify breaking the law? Explain that King gave his reasons in the long letter written while he was imprisoned. Hand out the page of excerpts from his letter.

b) Have students take turns reading the excerpts aloud and discuss King’s argument along the following lines:

Questions: How does King explain why he urges people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregated public schools and then breaks laws that he disagrees with? Any law that degrades a person is unjust, according to Dr. King. What does “degrade” mean? In what way does he think segregation is degrading to the individual? What is the connection that King sees between unjust laws and racial discrimination in voting? When he says that a law can be “just on its face but unjust in its application,” what example does he give? What attitude does King say one should adopt if breaking an unjust law?

c) Note that King does not use the term “civil disobedience.” Write these words on the board along with a dictionary definition. Ask students whether Dr. King’s actions meet the definition.

5. Examine/analyze photos of youth in the midst of the Birmingham demonstrations.

a) The Project C narrative told of young people joining the demonstrations after getting trained in nonviolence—and then being treated very roughly by the authorities. Hand out copies of the news photos showing this rough treatment and then divide the class into small groups.

b) With one person in each group serving as secretary, students are to record at least three observations and three questions about the two photos showing young people during the demonstrations (images at left and center). Come back together as a class and share responses to the pictures.

c) Ask students to write a brief response (1-2 paragraphs) to these questions:

Questions: What new information did these photos provide about Project C beyond what you read in the narrative? What new questions did they raise for you about this event?

Optional follow-up questions:

Provide more information about the photo at left of the police dog lunging at the young man. (See below under “Background on Primary Sources.”) Ask students if this information changes their impressions and whether it raises any new questions about the photo.

Specific questions about the individual photos:

• Photo at left: Do you think you would have reacted to the police dog any differently from this young man had you been in his shoes? (How so?)
• Photo in center: How might you have reacted if you’d been on the receiving end when the high-pressure hoses were turned on? What sort of thoughts could be going through your mind? What emotions could you be feeling?
• Photo at right: The leaders of Project C were committed to peaceful protests and led workshops in nonviolence prior to the demonstrations. Do you think the man shown in the picture at right had this kind of training? (Compare his reaction to the patrolman and police dog with the reactions of youth in the other two photos.)

This last question also provides an opening to give students more information about nonviolence, including Gandhi’s use of nonviolent protest during India’s quest for independence, which had inspired Dr. King and other civil rights activists. Descriptions of role-play exercises used to help prepare demonstrators not to react violently if attacked can be found in many books on the Civil Rights Movement, e.g., We’ve Got a Job by Cynthia Levinson (see bibliography below).

6. Write a persuasive letter from the standpoint of a student-demonstrator.

a) Distribute the Justice Department telephone log from May 17, 1963. Explain that staff members of the Justice Department remained on duty after hours to receive incoming calls about civil rights demonstrations and incidents around the country. Have students take turns reading the first entry, with notes on the call from Joe Dolan. (Explain first who he was and what he was doing in Birmingham -- see below under Additional Info/Background on Primary Sources.) Discuss the following.

Questions: How serious a penalty were student-demonstrators facing in terms of the School Board’s proposed disciplinary actions? What was Mr. Dolan’s opinion about the plan?

b) Give students a chance to scan the notes on calls from Bill Hines of the FBI.

Question: Based on the reports from Mr. Hines, what impact do the demonstrations in Birmingham seem to be having on civil rights-related actions in other states?

c) As a concluding activity for the lesson, give the class this exercise in persuasive writing:

Imagine that you are one of the students who is facing disciplinary action because you skipped classes to take part in the demonstrations. Assume that Joe Dolan’s opinion is correct, and that the Birmingham School Board is giving individual principals discretion on whether to expel, suspend or impose a less harsh penalty on student-demonstrators. The principal of your school, Mrs. Jones, has asked you to come to her office. She tells you that she’ll base her decision in your case on the following assignment:

You are to write a letter to her to convince her that your actions were based on principle and an understanding of the issues involved—and not just on wanting to join the crowd. The letter should include a paragraph on each of the following:

• description of a local ordinance you believe to be unjust, and why;
• how the ordinance has affected you, your family and/or other people in the community;
• explanation of how you and others who marched, participated in sit-ins, sang and shouted, carried signs, etc. were exercising rights guaranteed under the Constitution;
• why your actions do not imply a disrespect for the law;
• what you learned from this experience—about yourself and about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy.

Note that even though students at the time probably wouldn’t have read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” they may well have heard Dr. King speak about the same ideas during nonviolence training sessions at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Therefore, they may choose to cite passages from his letter in making their case to the principal.

Use the letter-writing assignment to assess how well students have met the learning objectives.

Additional documents

As an optional activity, give students these two additional primary sources to examine along with copies of the Written Document Analysis Worksheet. Students may work on these individually or in small groups and then share their observations. Specific questions about each document can be addressed in class discussion.

Telegram from Wyatt Tee Walker to the President on the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, April 13, 1963

Questions: What conditions were King and Abernathy subjected to in the jail? To which specific constitutional guarantees is Walker referring?

Statement by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the Birmingham demonstrations, May 3, 1963

Questions: What was Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s attitude regarding the demonstrations? How do RFK’s views compare with those expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter written from the jail in Birmingham?

Note: RFK discussed civil rights and respect for the law in his first speech as Attorney General. It was delivered to a southern audience at the University of Georgia in May, 1961, a few months after the university had gone through a difficult desegregation process. The speech can be found on the Library's website here .

1. There are a number of well-written, well-illustrated nonfiction books for middle grades and older that tell the story of this event. The bibliography (see below) lists ten titles, all of which give special attention to the involvement of teenagers and younger children in the demonstrations. Have students choose one of the books to read on their own. Alternatively, present one of the accounts to your class as a read-aloud. A Dream of Freedom by Diane McWhorter features a ten-page chapter on Birmingham; All the People by Joy Hakim includes a four-page narrative. Following the reading, ask students to compare/contrast it with the essay on Project C.

2. A sampling of pro and con letters regarding the Birmingham demonstrations may be found at in the Project C Public Opinion sub-chapter . Students might find a useful quote or other information in the correspondence to bolster the argument in their letter to the principal. For the purpose of the exercise, students can assume that these were “open” letters to the president (i.e., they could have also been published in a newspaper at the time).

3. The following assignment can be given to students as a follow-up to reading the excerpts from Dr. King’s letter:

It was stressful, scary and physically uncomfortable for Martin Luther King Jr. to spend a week in that jail cell in Birmingham. However, he demonstrated that one’s mind can roam free even if one’s body is confined. Research the life of another person who had been “a prisoner of conscience” (i.e., someone jailed or confined for disobeying unjust laws). Write a brief profile and select an inspiring quote from this individual to share with the class.

4. Students can research and report on historical or contemporary examples of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience in the US and around the world—or, more specifically, of young people who have taken a stand against injustice. Malala Yousafzai is an outstanding recent example, and students may find her July 12, 2013 speech at the United Nations to be especially inspiring.

Connections to Curricula (Standards)

National History Standards - US History, Era 9: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)

• Standard 3: Domestic policies after World War II
• 4A: The student understands the "Second Reconstruction" and its advancement of civil rights.

National History Standards - Historical Thinking Skills

• Standard 1: Chronological Thinking
• Standard 2: Historical Comprehension
• Standard 3: Historical Analysis and Interpretation

National Standards for Civics and Government

Grades 5-8 Content Standards

Standard III-E.2: Students should be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a rule or law, by determining if it is fair, i.e., not biased against or for any individual or group.

Standard V-B.2: Students should be able to identify political rights, e.g., the right to vote, petition, assembly, freedom of press.

• courage—the strength to stand up for one’s convictions when conscience demands;
• respect for law—willingness to abide by laws, even though one may not be in complete agreement with every law [and] willingness to work through peaceful, legal means to change laws which are thought to be unwise or unjust.

Standard V-E.3: Students should be able to:

• explain how Americans can use the following means to monitor and influence politics and government at local, state, and national levels [including] taking part in peaceful demonstrations;
• describe historical and current examples of citizen movements seeking to promote individual rights and the common good, e.g., civil rights movements; explain what civil disobedience is, how it differs from other forms of protest, what its consequences might be, and circumstances under which it might be justified.

Common Core State Standards

• ELA College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language
• ELA – Reading Informational Texts, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language, and Literacy in History/Social Studies for grades 6-8.

C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards

• Discipline 1 - Developing questions and planning inquiries;
• Discipline 2 - Applying disciplinary concepts and tools (History and Civics)
• Discipline 3 - Evaluating sources and using evidence; and
• Discipline 4 - Communicating conclusions and taking informed action

National Council of Teachers of English : Standards 1,3,5,6,7,8,9, and 12

Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework

• 8.T4 – Rights and responsibilities of citizens

Massachusetts English Language Arts Framework

• Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language

Additional Information

Background on Primary Sources

Birmingham’s Segregation Ordinances This set of excerpts from The General Code of the City of Birmingham, Alabama (published by The Michie Company, 1944) was adapted from a primary source feature found on the website of Cynthia Levinson, author of We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March . Excerpts from the same original source have also been published on the PBS Teachers’ Domain website, among others.

“Signs of Segregation” The images are from an unrestricted collection of photographs at the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html . The source was the Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information. The photos date from the 1930s and 1940s.

Telegram from Wyatt Tee Walker to the President on the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, April 13, 1963 Wyatt Tee Walker was the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference while Martin Luther King Jr. served as president and Ralph Abernathy as vice president of the organization. The day before this telegram was sent, King, Abernathy and dozens of other activists had been arrested after they marched through the streets of Birmingham, defying an Alabama state court injunction that forbid them “from engaging in, sponsoring, promoting or encouraging mass street parades, marches, picketing, sit-ins, and other actions likely to cause a breach of the peace.”

“Martin Luther King Jr. on Just and Unjust Laws” – excerpts from a letter to fellow clergymen written from Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963 The original letter can be found here . Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this after reading a statement by eight white clergymen that appeared in a Birmingham newspaper the morning after his arrest. Urging that the demonstrations cease, they concluded that: “When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.” As part of his lengthy response, which he began writing in the margins of the newspaper and on other scraps of paper, King analyzed the difference between just and unjust laws. He spelled out the reasons why disobeying an unjust law was not only right but necessary.

Front-page news photos of the demonstrations in Birmingham, May 4, 1963 edition of The Charleston Gazette The picture at left is one of the most famous images of the civil rights era. It was taken by Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson and shows high school student Walter Gadsden, seemingly calm and unflinching, as a police dog lunges at his midsection while Officer Dick Middleton grips his sweater. Although the newspaper identifies the teenager as “a young marcher,” he was actually a bystander watching some classmates who were participating. The picture was flashed around the world and it had a major impact. Diane McWhorter’s book, A Dream of Freedom (see the bibliography) has an interesting sidebar on the photograph.

Statement by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the Birmingham demonstrations, May 3, 1963 As head of the Justice Department, Robert Kennedy was the primary law enforcement official in the federal government, and this statement would certainly have reflected the views of his brother, the president. Both JFK and RFK wanted to avoid sending federal troops into Alabama, and they believed that real and lasting changes could only be accomplished through negotiations among black and white leaders within the local community.

Justice Department telephone log with notes on a call from Joe Dolan, May 17, 1963 Joseph F. Dolan served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and was a key figure on Robert Kennedy’s staff at the Justice Department. Dolan was sent to Birmingham along with Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, head of the Civil Rights Division, to help mediate the racial conflict there as well as to provide first-hand reports on the situation.

Bibliography for students

Bolden, Tonya. M.L.K. – Journey of a King . Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2007. Part III, “I’ve Got to March,” includes details of Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement with the Birmingham campaign.

Brimner, Larry Dane. Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor. Calkins Creek, 2011.;

Brimner, Larry Dane. Birmingham Sunday . Boyds Mills Press, 2010.

Hakim, Joy. A History of US/Book 10: All the People . Oxford University Press, 1995.

See chapter 19: “Some Brave Children Meet a Roaring Bull.”

Levine, Ellen. Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories . Puffin Books, 1993. See chapter 5: “The Children’s Crusade.”

Levinson, Cynthia. We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March . Peachtree Publishers, 2012.

Mayer, Robert H. When the Children Marched: The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement . Enslow Publishers, 2008.

McWhorter, Diane. A Dream of Freedom: The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968 . Scholastic, 2004. See chapter on Birmingham.

Rochelle, Belinda. Witnesses to Freedom: Young People Who Fought for Civil Rights . Lodestar Books, 1993. See chapter 7: The Children’s Crusade .

Tougas, Shelley. Birmingham 1963: How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support . Compass Point Books, 2011.

Why Is It Just to Break an Unjust Law? Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Law is a guideline and a set of rules which apply to all citizens of a country. However, sometimes the law may only be for a specific race class or ethnic community and may favor the majority and maybe there to repress or discriminate against a minority. In this case, the question arises, is it just to break unjust laws? This paper argues in favor of the statement that it is quite just to break unjust laws. This argument is presented through the arguments presented by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Junior was a civil rights activist who was jailed time and again for his role in the civil rights movement. He in his Letter from Birmingham jail wrote to a group of clergymen and presented his case as to why he led the protest in Birmingham Alabama.

Breaking of law in any country is illegal, however when some laws are obeyed and others are not like when the Supreme Court passed the 1954 ruling abolishing segregation it was not followed in the southern states. This means that there are just laws and unjust laws. As Dr. King argues that it is a person’s moral obligation to obey all the just laws, in the same way, it is also a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law.

A just law is a law that is in line with God’s law and moral law, on the other hand, an unjust law is not in sync with the moral and ethical codes. He uses the argument presented by St. Thomas Aquinas for just and unjust war, according to the Reverend; unjust law is not based on natural and eternal laws. A law that is there to uplift humanity is just while the one which degrades it is unjust. Therefore all laws regarding segregation are unjust as they not only impact the minorities physically but also emotionally. These types of unjust laws give an artificial superiority to the segregator and an inferiority complex to those who are segregated.

An unjust law should be broken because it makes it applicable to a certain group of people, only the minorities have to observe and live by it while the majority doesn’t believe that it applies to them. The difference between people for example in the time before the civil rights movement where laws were made by white people and had to be followed by the blacks. These laws are unjust and therefore should be broken.

Secondly when laws are enacted without any involvement of a minority, when they are not allowed to vote and are then imposed with laws that discriminate against them, these laws are unjust and people are justified when they do not obey these laws.

Thirdly some laws may seem just but are unjust when applied, like when people are stopped from assembling and they are not allowed to use their first amendment rights like freedom of speech and movement. These unjust laws restrict people from exercising their basic rights; therefore they are unjust and should be broken.

Unjust laws are meant to be broken and they should be done openly and willingly, people who break these unjust laws should be ready to face any consequences for their actions. People who stand up to these just laws and are willing to bear the penalty have the highest regard for the just laws of the land.

• Analysis of Riggs v. Palmer Case
• Police Liability Issues and High Speed Pursuits
• Does Antigone Have an Obligation to Obey or Disobey Creon’s Law?
• History of Abolishing Slavery
• “A Letter From Birmingham Jail” and “I Have A Dream” by M. L. King Jr.
• Laws Regarding Vaping and E-Cigarettes
• Human Rights: Fredin v. Sweden Legal Case
• Section 230 of the Communications Act
• Jeff Kosseff: The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet
• International Human Laws Definition
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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Crash of a Tupolev TU-104B in Omsk

Chronology of Omsk Region in the Soviet Union

Omsk city coat of arms, 1973-1996.

• Omsk Region
• pre-Soviet Omsk Region flags, 1716-1917
• 1918 - Akmolinsk Region is renamed into Omsk Region
• 1920 - Omsk Region reformed into Omsk Governorship
• 1934 - Omsk Region reorganized within the vast boundaries of the former Tobol’sk Governorship
• 1934 - Omsk Region boundaries deliniated anew ( present boundaries )
• 1973 - Omsk City received a Soviet coat of Arms

The shield and year 1716 signify the city’s foundation as a fortress in 1716. Two rivers, Irtysh (large) and Om’ (small), at the confluence of which the fortress was founded, are represented by blue stripes. Stalk of wheat indicates Omsk’s dominant agrarian role in the region. During 1940-50s, Omsk developed major oil-refining, chemical, synthetic rubber and machine-building industries. Flask (center), tire (right) and iron boiler? (bottom center) reflect these industrial trends. Omsk’s Soviet Arms had standard shape. Igor Pavlovsky , 08 May 1999

See also: Omsk City flag and coat-of-arms