Martin Luther King

According to the Dictionary Online (2013), “Injustice is the violation of the rights of others; unjust or unfair action or treatment.” Martin Luther King Jr. defined an unjust law in the Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), “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.” Judeo-Christian ethics were applied to allow for civil disobedience during the protest. King believed that there are the laws that are legal, and the laws that are just. Justice is above legality, and it holds a moral context to it. In his words: “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.” I also feel it is important when thinking about what is just, and unjust to realize the importance between the what is legal and illegal, and see how these go hand in hand. Also, it is important to be able to notice the difference between the two of them. This way, we can figure out whether or not civil disobedience is ever acceptable. King had also mentioned a few examples of the differences between legality and justice in his Letter From Birmingham Jail. In that letter he reminds us of everything the Nazis and Adolf Hitler did during the Holocaust, and how it was apparently “legal”. In Germany, they changed the laws to cover up what they had done. It became this poor excuse for them brutally killing thousands of people. These people died based on their religious views, handicaps, and life-style choices. Although what they did was legal, what they did was not just. The laws they made were unjust, and because justice is a higher power than legality. Those laws and those