Unjust Law In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Throughout his letters, sermons, and other writings, Martin Luther King, Jr. expresses the idea that one has a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law – most notably in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” King also conveys the idea that change must be demanded, and not waited for by the oppressed. Additionally, Michael Sandel describes Aristotle’s idea that justice is teleological and honorific in Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? This means that determining whether something is just requires delving into the telos, or true meaning or purpose of that thing. Sandel also describes the idea that some are more qualified than others to determine this telos. Based on King, Aristotle, and Sandel’s ideas of duty to disobey unjust laws to demand change and of whose job it is to decide the telos of actions, Antigone’s burial of her brother in Sophocles’ Antigone is completely just.

advocates for often in his sermons and letters. He claims that this is one way to create change – something that will not happen if nothing is done to create it. In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” he said, “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 3). King often appeals to authority – he does so here with St. Augustine. This credible source seems to be enough for him to believe that one should break unjust laws. Antigone sees Kreon’s law against burying her brother as unjust because it goes against what the gods want, meaning it is her obligation to disobey the law. Of course this means that her actions were