Political Obligation And Martin Luther King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail

Fundamentally, a society that aims to maintain order and peace will create some form of a legal code. Whether it be a set of rules that represent society’s beliefs, or an uncodified social contract, laws establish order in a society for individuals who would otherwise act unruly. The argument whether all laws should be abided by at all times or not is examined in both Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Political Obligation and Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”. Proposed by Socrates, Hobbes and Kant, it is crucial that citizens follow the law, rather than arbitrarily breaking the law because it doesn’t follow an individual’s morals. Contrastingly, according to Martin Luther King, unjust laws created by corrupt rulers

When convicted for “corrupting the youth”, Socrates was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Though his friends gathered and created an escape plan, he chose to stay and face the “fatal hemlock” (Stanford, Socrates, 1). He stated three principle reasons to follow the law. In the first, gratitude theory, he states that he should not disrespect the law because he “owes his birth, nurture, and education” to it; to break it would be to disrespect it and all of the good it has done for him. He also argued that since he has lived all of his life in Athens, he has a “commitment” to obey the laws in place. His final argument, that of “fair play”, states that, if an individual breaks the law, it acts as a “mistreatment” to their “fellow citizens”. If a citizen were to break the law, it would not only be ungracious to the definitive force that granted them with education, but also a disgrace to the individual's fellow

He firmly believes in the importance of following a moral code, and applauds those who break unjust laws to “arouse the conscience of the community”. King’s argument, however, is grounded on the basis that people are inherently good, a basis that Hobbes would likely disagree with. If in society, people acted morally all the time, it would be plausible to follow King’s theory, however, his theory is impractical. King argues that “an unjust law is no law at all”, and therefore should be broken. De facto, if people broke laws according to how “just” they were, individuals would pick and choose which laws to follow, based on their own benefits and disadvantages. While King does concede that constant evasion of laws would lead to “anarchy”, he stills believes that respectfully breaking the law shows the “highest respect” for it, an argument that is flawed according to gratitude theory (King, 40). Though non-violent breaking of the law could work in an ideal society, simply put, current society today is not invariably good. In fact, without laws to dictate what is right and wrong, a society would fall into an anarchic state; it is dubious that society would not turn to