Now then, King uses morality to help explain the difference between just and unjust laws. King says “A just law is a man-made law that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” (356) He goes on to say “Unjust……. Is out of harmony with the moral law.” (356). This illustrates for the clergymen where each type of law stands in a moral position. Each type of law affects a person’s personality in a negative or positive way.
These examples provide clear evidence for his argument of the civil rights movement being a human rights movement, and not a black movement. King labels these events and traumas as examples of injustice. Because justice is an abstract concept, King goes on to define it as injustice as “a code that is out of harmony with the moral law...a human law that Is not rooted in eternal law and natural law; any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” In other words, the unjust law is only directed to one minority group, meaning that one group can’t do certain things that the other group can and not get punished for it. Treating one group as less and degrading them, making them
King believes that a good law is a designed code that should have morals and inline with the beliefs of god. An unjust law would be considered the opposite, and go against any morals while also giving people in power the ability not to obey the law. “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” (King, 1963, p.
Civil Disobedience and its Significance Dr. Martin Luther King’s, “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was addressing to several clergymen his reasoning behind civil disobedience. Dr. King discussed just and unjust laws, and explains his thesis- justice upholds the dignity of the human spirit, while injustice works against it. Dr. King does, in fact, make a convincing argument for civil disobedience because he gives significant criteria by which civil disobedience can and will defeat unjust laws. Dr. King first explains that nonviolent direct action, or civil disobedience, is required to create crisis and confront the main issue at hand. Throughout his preaching of the mistreatment of African Americans in the south, Dr. King drew attention to the
Although it is one’s moral obligation to abide by the laws for the sake of humanity and harmony amongst the nation, it is unconstitutional to not hold all accountable to the same standards of this nation’s constitution. Therefore, breaking
He believed people had both a legal and moral obligation to obey just laws, while having a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. The distinction between a just and an unjust law in the eyes of King was
The presumption of innocence is widely accepted as an integral and significant principle of the criminal justice that lawyers all over the world adhere to as it is a tenant of the Criminal Law. The presumption of innocence can be defined as a misnomer; a name that is wrongly or unsuitably applied to a person or an object. It also can be described as an assumption made towards an innocent that is included in the absence of opposing evidence. It is shown in the case of Taylor v Kentucky, 436 U.S. 478, 98 S. Ct 1930, 56 L. However, it is not considered as an evidence of the defendant’s innocence and it does not require any compulsory inference that are favourable towards the defendant from any facts of the evidence. In some countries like South
The second condition is: the legal norm must be effective which means that people should obey the legal norm and if not obeyed at least applied to them. Obeyed means that any act contradicts with this norm is a “condition of sanction,” while applied means that whenever that condition of sanction is fulfilled it should be ordered and executed by the court or by executive authority. Kelsen afterwards describes the norm of any legal system as a paramedical structure, in this structure, Kelsen arranges
What both ethics in real-life and ethics in law have in common is that they both serve as a guide for conduct and in both cases disobedience to these rules can lead to punishment. On the other hand, ethics in real-life are much broader, and vary greatly with individuals and groups. Another difference is that ethics in real-life are not regulated by specific institutional organisms, and the rules are not clearly established as in law ethics. More so, disobeying to ethics in real-life might lead to social marginalization, but no legal consequences are to be faced, which contrasts with what happens when law ethics are not followed-there are specific punishments for each type of disobedience, and these punishments are applied within strict juridical
The definition of justice A just society has just and fair laws, but that is not always the case. In cases like that, rebels are inevitable, there will always be someone who is willing to define justice. In the letter from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King Jr. found injustice in the society and shared his idea of justice and injustice. Similarly, in the essay on the duty of civil disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau also stated his perception on justice. After examining the two articles, it is not hard to notice that there are some similarities between their of justice, as well as differences.