Analysis Of Letter From A Birmingham Jail By Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. argues that one who disobeys an unjust law must do so with a willingness to accept the consequences of breaking the law. Through civil disobedience, King aims to draw attention to ongoing injustices, and contends that one who seeks to achieve such an objective must also hold oneself to the higher moral law of justice, or the law of God, by seeking such a remedy peacefully. I argue that Socrates, in Plato’s Crito, similarly appeals to this higher notion of justice when he explains his rationale for remaining in jail. First, I demonstrate that both King and Socrates seek to awaken their respective communities through each community’s respective legal framework. Next, I show that

King seeks to draw attention to injustice by creating societal tension to help others “rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism;” similarly, Socrates creates a “tension in the mind” of Athenians in order to help free them from “the bondage of myths and half truths.” King does so by breaking laws that he argues are unjust, either on face (a law mandating segregation) or in practice (an ordinance requiring demonstrators to have a parade permit). Both types of laws are used to uphold unjust ends, and thus, in King’s view, must be disobeyed. King asserts, however, that in order to avoid anarchy and “arouse the conscience of the community,” one must break the law “openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” (King’s acceptance of punishment thus also serves a practical function, for it is crucial to the effectiveness of his campaign that he work from within the existing legal and penal system to catalyze the awareness and change necessary to remedy injustice.) He argues that by doing so, those who practice civil disobedience are actually exercising “the highest respect for the

On one hand, Socrates sees the majority and its opinion as irrelevant to justice, asking, “Why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many?”. In fact, he not only argues that the beliefs of the many are unimportant, but goes so far as to imply that the moral code of the majority is patently unjust: “Doing evil in return for evil, which is the morality of the many - is that just or not?”, to which Crito replies: “Not just.” King, on the other hand, contends that the question of whether a law is just is in part determined by the majority-minority dynamic: “An unjust law is a code that a . . . majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself . . . 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.” King and Socrates both appeal to a higher notion of justice that they see as universal and uninfluenced by the people’s opinions. It is important, however, to note that in King’s view, majority-minority politics inform our interpretation of this standard of justice. Although the majority-minority dynamic plays no role in the formulation of this standard which, as a “law of God,” is predetermined, in King’s view this dynamic informs our application of the