Just and Unjust Laws

This week I had the opportunity to read and consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” and engage if from an ethics perspective. I had read the letter before in school but not since a seminary education introduced me to the “father of the church” including Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. Reading this letter with that background and considering the ethical ideas of just and unjust laws was like reading it through new lenses.

The works of Aquinas and Augustine are foundation to the understanding of Christian ethics and folks have been considering them for a long time. I found this article from the International Journal of Ethics that discussed Augustine’s ethics and was published in 1903! http://www.jstor.org/stable/2376453?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

I also found a student’s writing on Augustine and ethics and she puts it nicely:

“Augustine was almost always doing ethics; his most basic questions concerned the nature of the good and how to seek it. Yet he was not an ethicist, insofar as it is construed as an autonomous inquiry. In asking what the good is, how it relates to us, and how we should relate to it Augustine’s thought was at once metaphysical, theological, psychological, ontological, - and given his reliance on scripture – exegetical.” (For more go to: http://www.academia.edu/2519976/Saint_Augustine_Augustine_of_Hippo_An_Introduction_to_his_Ethical_Thought_)

So Augustine didn’t set out to necessarily be an ethicist and yet we are considering his work as it relates to ethics. I think the same think is true with Martin Luther King Jr. He did not set out to be an ethicist – but has become a touchstone for those considering the ethical nature of nonviolent civil disobedience.

MLK cites Augustine (as well as Thomas Aquinas and Martin Buber) early in his response to the clergymen who sent him a letter asking him to slow down his work and stop breaking the law.

MLK admits the paradox and recognizes that it is strange to be asking people to follow some laws and then also asking them to directly disobey others. He makes a clear distinction between just and unjust laws. MLK describes a just law as a human-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of god and an unjust law is a code or law that does not. Laws that uplift humanity and human personality are just and laws that degrade humanity and personhood are unjust. In his Letter, MLK goes on to give several examples of how he sees just and unjust laws playing out in the fight against segregation.

In his Letter, he makes the argument that “segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful…So I can urge men to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.”

King is making the argument against segregation from a variety of standpoints to appeal to his specific audience and the audience beyond.

Considering the premise that there are just and unjust laws has been interesting this week in my corner of the world. Just across the river – I can see it from my office – is the state of Alabama. Last month, a federal court ruling declared the state’s ban on same-sex unions was illegal and violated the U.S. Constitution. This move made same-sex marriage legal in Alabama. In response, Alabama’s chief justice Roy Moore told probate judges in all 67 counties in Alabama not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples essentially telling the federal government to stay out of it. This made some interesting and confusing things happen this week. Some counties in Alabama began issuing the licenses Monday while others refused. The decisions seemed to be made by individual judges and others in the county offices. Several county offices stopped issuing marriage licenses all together. So to avoid discriminating against some – no one is able to get married!

So what does this have to do with unjust and just laws?

I do admit that I have a dog in this fight and strong opinions. I am engaged to be married my partner and will be doing so in a few short days. We’re having to travel to another state to be legally wed and then will come back with a legal document that is not recognized in the state where we live. I could list the reasons why this is unfortunate and harms my family – but those are all spelled out somewhere else. And I think most of us recognize the world is changing. The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on same-sex marriages at the federal level by the end of the year and most people think they will rule favorable to this cause.

So what about just and unjust laws?

We look back on the civil rights movement of the 60’s and are able to say “these people were ethically making good choices” and “these people ethically made poor choices.”  We can say even though these folks broke the law, ultimately they did the right thing. So what will history say about this movement happening right now? What will history tell us? Who is acting ethically? Who is not?

In considering this, I saw a very interesting article from TIME about how the battle for civil rights related to same-sex marriage is not the same as the civil rights movement in the 60’s. It is worth the read. Here is an excerpt:

"The comparison is an easy one to make, and numerous outlets drew the connection on Monday, in the aftermath of Moore’s attempt to halt same-sex marriages in his state. Facing integration of the University of Alabama in 1963, which had been mandated years earlier by Brown v. Board of Education, Wallace tried to block the change and was met by National Guard troops. This week, Moore defied a federal District Court ruling by ordering local probate judges not to license same-sex marriages, a bold challenge to the established principle of federal supremacy over state courts. In short, both Wallace and Moore relied on states’ rights claims to defy the federal government’s demand for social change."

(For the whole article see: http://time.com/3703155/george-wallace-roy-moore/)