Is It Morally Acceptable to Break Unjust Laws

Just, Unjust and Laws of Conscience
Just a half a century ago, interracial marriage was still illegal in some states, and it has only been recently that same-sex marriages have been legalized across the country and cannabis has been decriminalized or legalized in more than half of the states. This trends mean that laws that were once widely regarded as just at one point in time become unjust as social views change. The argument concerning whether laws should be regarded as just and therefore worthy of being obeyed or disregarded as a matter of conscience, however, is certainly not new but rather dates to antiquity. The purpose of part one of this paper is to provide an assessment of Socrates' arguments in the “Crito” concerning his rationale for remaining in prison and accepting his death sentence. In addition, an evaluation concerning Martin Luther King’s contrasting arguments in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and his support of civil disobedience is followed by an analysis of their arguments which touch on just, unjust and moral laws or laws of conscience. Finally, a presentation of salient arguments in opposition to Socrates’ arguments presented in the “Crito” is followed by a corresponding presentation of arguments in support of Martin Luther King’s position in support civil disobedience of unjust laws in part two. In sum, the arguments discussed below focus on what obligations individuals have to obey laws and whether there is a fundamental conflict between civil and moral law, and to which do individuals owe their allegiance.
Part One: Critical Analysis and Evaluation
Socrates’ arguments in the “Crito” for remaining in prison and accepting the death sentence
What are laws anyway? According to the straightforward definition provided by Black’s Law Dictionary (1990), a law is “a body of rules of action or conduct prescribed by controlling authority, and having binding legal force [and] that which must be obeyed and followed by citizens subject to sanctions or legal consequences” (p. 884). Charged with violating the Athenian laws concerning the “corruption of the youth” and “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state,” Socrates was sentenced to death in by a jury of 500 Athenians in 399 BCE (The suicide of Socrates, 2018). A wealthy friend of Socrates, Crito, wanted to use his wealth and significant political influence to help Socrates escape from his imprisonment and avoid this unjust sentence. In sum, from Crito’s perspective, Socrates has no legitimate reason to remain in prison or to allow the state to carry out its death sentence because the laws that were broken were not just.
Fortunately for historians, Socrates provided an in-depth explanation concerning his rationale for his response to the death penalty notwithstanding its unjustness. According to Socrates, individuals should apply an step-wise approach to evaluating laws to determine if they are just or unjust and therefore worthy of being obeyed or not. For example, Boghossian (2006) reports that the Socratic analytical method is comprised for five steps that Socrates advocated for this purpose as follows:
1. Wonder: The first step in the Socratic Method requires positing the philosophical/moral question, such as "Why obey the law?' Questions are asked in order to further define the idea in question; that is, Socrates seeks definitions for the terms about which he inquired, starting with general questions and systematically narrowing down the inquiry.
2. Hypothesis: This second step involves a careful and thoughtful consideration of the responses received to the question posited in the first step. Only the response in question is addressed, there is no evaluation of the response.
3. Elenchus (refutation and cross-examination): This step (also referred to alternatively as the question-and-answer or cross-examination stage) represents the main element of the Socratic Method wherein Socrates played the devil’s advocate by offering counterpoints to the arguments by participants that were developed in the preceding steps to determine whether the entire set of beliefs (or a particular belief) held by the participants are mutually consistent.
4. Accept/reject the hypothesis: The penultimate step in the Socratic Method involves accepting or rejecting the hypothesis developed in the first four steps. If the counterexample is accepted, then the discussion goes back to the second stage and another hypothesis is elicited. Alternatively, the counterexample could be rejected by both parties who agree that it was neither necessary nor sufficient to undermine the hypothesis. If the counterexample is rejected, then the hypothesis is accepted as being "provisionally" true. If there are other counterexamples that could show the hypothesis to be false, then Socrates returns the discussion to stage three.
5. Act accordingly: The final step in the Socratic Method whereby laws are evaluated to determine whether they are just or unjust involves taking appropriate action in response (adapted from Boghossian, 2006, p. 43).
Taken together, although the foregoing process does provide a systematic strategy for evaluating the justness or unjustness of specific laws, it is constrained in major ways by the quality and quantity of the counter arguments and examples that are offered by the participants who are involved in the analysis. In this regard, the manner in which Socrates applied this step-wise approach to analyzing his predicament following his death sentence can be discerned from his exchanges with his friend, Crito. Despite Crito’s insistence that Socrates was not morally bound to obey unjust laws, though, Socrates was absolutely adamant that since he was a citizen of Greece who had benefited from the state’s other laws all his life, the social contract thus created meant that he was morally obligated to conform to its laws regardless of whether they were just or unjust (Kelley, 2012).
In other words, Socrates believed in the adage that two wrongs do not make a right, and it was his moral obligation to willingly accede to the jury’s decision about his fate rather than rocking the Athenian legal boat by accepting Crito’s offer of escape from misguided justice. For instance, according to Kelley (2012), “Crito, whose wealth will be used to bribe the guards and free Socrates, reminds him that the trial and sentence are unjust. Socrates refuses Crito's appeal, insisting that one injustice does not legitimate another” (p. 440). While it is reasonable to suggest that Socrates held some strong and valid beliefs about the overarching need to obey the laws of the land, his analysis of his own circumstances and how he should respond was predicated on the notion even unjust laws must be obeyed, an issue that was specifically addressed in Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” as discussed further below.
Martin Luther King’s arguments in support of civil disobedience
In April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King was jailed for his role in the Birmingham Campaign which sought to facilitate the integration of African-Americans into communities in Alabama. Like the firebrand John Brown a century before, King’s jailers were sufficiently respectful and accommodating that they provided him with pen and paper whereupon he wrote his famous call for nonviolent protests against unjust laws in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In this well-written, 6,900-word historic epistle, King made several references to individuals’ moral obligations to disobey unjust laws for good reason, including his impassioned claim that:
[T]here are two types of laws: just and unjust. 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.’
This assertion underscores the highly subjective nature of determining which laws or just and which are not, but King suggests that there are some ways to differentiate between the two that can help guide individuals in their course of action. For instance, King reports that, “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.” While this observation provides some degree of definitional clarity, the issues that are involved in selectively disobeyed or obeying laws according to an individual’s interpretation of the “law of God” are sufficiently profound that they require closer scrutiny as discussed further in Part Two below.
Part Two: Original Argument and Conclusion
Arguments opposed to Socrates’ position
While King admired and cited the civil disobedience of Socrates as a exemplar of how people should respond to unjust laws, he was adamantly opposed to punishing individuals for possessing the moral courage to stand up for what they believe is the appropriate course of action when confronted with unjust laws. For example, in his letter, King emphasizes that, “We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.”
In sharp contrast to King’s publicly stated firm conviction that his actions in Birmingham and elsewhere in the nation in support of the Fourteenth Amendment and equitable civil rights, Socrates was less forthcoming in his approach. For instance, Weiss (1998) emphasizes that, “Socrates seeks wherever possible to impress upon the court his loyalty to his rulers and to the god. Socrates tries, when possible -- at least before the verdict is announced -- to avoid provoking the jury's ill will” (pp. 14-15). This observation begs the important question, “Is loyalty and obedience to any regime an appropriate and moral response if they promulgate unjust laws?” and King’s response to this question is discussed below.
Arguments in support Martin Luther King’s position
Because governments have a moral obligation to avoid crafting laws that unfairly place some citizens at a disadvantage over others, it was King’s position that any failure in this regard was justification for disobeying such laws. For example, in his letter, King points out that, “To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: 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.” On its face, the succinct but reasoned argument advanced by King appears to provide a useful definition of which laws can be legitimately regarded as just or unjust and therefore which should be obeyed, but there are other factors involved that must also be taken into account.
Certainly, the argument can be made that many laws that are otherwise just such as federal and state taxes or requirements for licensure to practice some professions may “degrade human personality” in some fashion, but this was not what King meant. Turning again to Black’s for some additional definitional clarity, natural laws are:
. . . intended to denote a system of rules and principles for the guidance of human conduct which, independently of enacted law, or of the systems peculiar to any one people, might be discovered by the rational intelligence of man, and would be found to grow out of and conform to his nature meaning his whole mental, moral and physical constitution. (p. 1026)
Unfortunately, humankind does not share the same level of rational intelligence, but everyone enjoys their “whole mental, moral and physical constitution.” Therefore, everyone also possesses the fundamental right to evaluate the laws of the land to determine whether they conform to natural laws that take precedence. This does not mean that citizens and pick and choose which laws they obey based on this analysis without legal consequences, but it does mean that they have the natural right to do so if they possess the mental and moral fortitude to endure the outcome.
Moreover, it has precisely been the application of this moral evaluation that, over time, has effected meaningful change in unjust laws. Even though Socrates and King were considered veritable anarchists who were a threat to the social order, both of these giants in history emerged as heroic in their efforts. Indeed, even King admirably cites Socrates’ courage in standing up for what he believed despite the consequences when he states, “Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal.”
Conclusion
The analysis of laws to determine whether they are just or unjust is replete with subjectivity, a constraint that has not changed since Socrates formulated his method of inquiry for this purpose. Times and people change, and the historical record confirms that laws that were once widely regarded by a majority of a nation’s citizenry may well fall by the wayside in views of changing social mores and values. This reality also means that a single individual’s resistance to laws that are regarded as unjust may be morally based, but the actions taken in response may still be temporally and situationally subject to punishment. In the case of Socrates, his view as explained in the “Crito” that he was morally bound to obey the laws of Athens and remain in prison and accept the jury’s death sentence because he had personally benefited from them were in sharp contrast to the arguments advanced by Martin Luther King who advocated both civil disobedience and the rejection of the state’s right to punish people in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Clearly, King’s arguments demand a more courageous and intrepid response to unjust laws that many if not most people are unwilling to produce, but the moral leadership he exemplified in his response to his incarceration provide a valuable framework in which similarly situated individuals can formulate a reasoned and moral response.

References
Black’s law dictionary. (1990). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.
Boghossian, P. (2006, March). Socratic pedagogy, critical thinking, and inmate education. Journal of Correctional Education, 57(1), 42-46.
Kelley, M. (2012, October 1). While pen, ink & paper can be had: Reading and writing in a time of revolution. Early American Studies, 10(3), 439-452.
The suicide of Socrates. (2018). Eyewitness to History. Retrieved from http://www.eyewitnessto history.com/socrates.htm.
Weiss, R. (1998). Socrates dissatisfied: An analysis of Plato's Crito. New York: Oxford University Press.