Part I: Due: Sunday
May 26
- How does M.L. King argue that segregation laws are unjust?
- Why, according to King, should we disobey unjust laws?
- How does Aquinas determine if a law is just or unjust?
- How would a Legal Positivist judge segregation laws?
Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes Saint Augustine’s famous remark that “an
unjust law is no law at all.” It has been objected that this claim is plainly
false. How can something fail to be “law” simply because it is unjust or in
some other way immoral? King, himself, critics point out, was punished and put
in jail for, as we would say, “breaking the law.” Assuming that King was right
and the racially discriminatory statutes and practices of the South were
unjust, does the fact that King wound up in jail prove that unjust laws
nonetheless remain laws? Does that fact in itself refute Augustine? If not, why
not?
No comments:
Post a Comment