Martin Luther King, Jr.: We have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws

Today is Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day, and like we do every year in hon­or of Dr. King’s mem­o­ry, I’m post­ing an excerpt from his Let­ter From Birm­ing­ham Jail.

In these pas­sages, Dr. King is explain­ing that not all laws are cre­at­ed equal. Laws are made by humans, and humans unfor­tu­nate­ly have a long his­to­ry of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against each oth­er. King says that we have a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to obey just laws, and a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­obey unjust laws. That’s how we expand freedom.

(Note that typos are con­tained in the orig­i­nal manuscript.)

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.

I hope you are able to see the dis­tinc­tion I am try­ing to point out. In no sense do I advo­cate evad­ing or defy­ing the law, as would the rabid seg­re­ga­tion­ist. That would lead to anar­chy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so open­ly, lov­ing­ly, and with a will­ing­ness to accept the penal­ty. 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.

Take a few min­utes today to read the whole thing.