Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Disobedience and the Duty to Obey the Law: Where Do We Go From Here? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Late Theory of Civil Disobedience
Journal of Politics, 2020
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” has been canonized as an essential statement of the political theory of civil disobedience. This article examines the early reception of King’s essay and the development of the liberal idea of civil disobedience it has become synonymous with to argue that its canonization coincided with, and displaced, the radicalization of King’s developing thinking about disobedience. It examines published and archival writings from 1965 through 1968 to reconstruct King’s power-oriented theory of “mass” civil disobedience as it developed in response to the dual challenges of white backlash and Black Power. The basic challenge of mass civil disobedience is how to mobilize liberating acts of taking power without undercutting the possibility of transformative integration through sharing power. To articulate this dilemma, this article draws on an undertheorized category from John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice to conceptualize disobedience as a practice of militant love.
2011
The belief that an essential relationship exists between law and justice has been recognized since the time of the ancient Greeks. In fact, the concept extends well beyond Western philosophy and jurisprudence. Distinct from other aspects of justice, the relationship between law and justice considers the nature of law and its dictates, as well as the responsibility of citizens to obey it. Although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lacked the developed legal analysis of jurisprudence scholars, he made a meaningful contribution to the intellectual discourse of his time by forcing the discussion on broader society and centering it on racial segregation-a critical issue of his day. This Article places Dr. King's views of law and justice within a historic and contemporary context by exploring the theory of law and justice and how it shaped and inspired Dr. King's leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. The Article begins by addressing a consideration of the special relationship between "law and justice." It then explores the three philosophical commitments that formed Dr. King's vision of law and justice: American democratic principles, Personalism, and natural law. Lastly, this Article considers Dr. King's vision in comparison to two schools of critical jurisprudence: Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory. Dr. King saw clear contradictions in the legal system that violated the demands of law and justice. This Article identifies and explores the valuable insights provided by Dr. King's vision of law and justice while still pointing out the oversights and contradictions present in it.
Dislocations and Shutdowns: MLK, BLM and the Rhetoric of Confrontation
Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 2018
During the last year of King's life, his ability to persuade and to gain a national consensus around issues of war, poverty, economic injustice, and the inequality suffered by blacks and all people of color had waned. Faced with increasing hostility to him and the movement along with the rising white backlash, King knew that moral suasion would not give him the results that he had hoped. This lead King, to launch the Poor People's Campaign as a movement of massive civil disobedience that would lead to economic boycotts and the shutdown entire cities. By doing this, King hoped that the government, sensitive to the dislocation and shutdowns would eventually do the " right thing. " I conclude by arguing that BLM whether knowingly or not, have adopted many of the ideas that King argued during the last year of his life becoming the natural extension of King's vision in the last year of his life.
Martin Luther King's Civil Disobedience and the American Covenant Tradition
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2000
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Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 2018
During the last year of King's life, his ability to persuade and to gain a national consensus around issues of war, poverty, economic injustice, and the inequality suffered by blacks and all people of color had waned. Faced with increasing hostility to him and the movement along with the rising white backlash, King knew that moral suasion would not give him the results that he had hoped. This lead King, to launch the Poor People's Campaign as a movement of massive civil disobedience that would lead to economic boycotts and the shutdown entire cities. By doing this, King hoped that the government, sensitive to the dislocation and shutdowns would eventually do the "right thing." I conclude by arguing that BLM whether knowingly or not, have adopted many of the ideas that King argued during the last year of his life becoming the natural extension of King's vision in the last year of his life.
"Tough Love": The Political Theology of Civil Disobedience
Perspectives on Politics, 2020
Love is a key concept in the theory and history of civil disobedience yet it has been purposefully neglected in recent debates in political theory. Through an examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s paradoxical notion of "aggressive love," I offer a critical interpretation of love as a key concept in a vernacular black political theology, and the consequences of love's displacement by law in liberal theories of civil disobedience. The first section locates the origins of aggressive love in an earlier generation of black theologians who looked to India's anticolonial struggle to reimagine the dignity of the oppressed as "creative survival." The second contextualizes King's early sermons on moral injury and self-respect within this tradition to reinterpret Stride toward Freedom's account of the dignity-enhancing effects of nonviolent resistance as the triumph of love over fear. The third considers the implications of these arguments for conceptualizing the moral psychology of the white citizen and its consequences for contemporary debates over the ideological uses of Civil Rights history. The call to respond to oppression with aggressive love illustrates the paradoxical character of civil disobedience obscured by legal accounts as well as by criticisms of the very idea of "civil" disobedience. This is the paradox of affirming civility while enacting disobedience in order to bind political confrontation with political pedagogy.
A DREAM COME TRUE? REFLECTION ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Every third Monday of January of every year all across America (and the world), we remember the birth, life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the impact and/or relevance of his vision, values and legacy on race relations in the United States. Although Martin Luther King Jr. was not the first black American to advocate vigorously for civil rights for African-Americans, his efforts were quite unique and compelling. Through his dream and involvement in the civil rights movement, Dr. King, Jr. gave hope and full meaning to the idea of equality, freedom, and justice. However, civil rights movements in America did not begin with Dr. King, Jr.; it dates back to the signing of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. The declaration contains a short but very powerful sentence, which states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." Ever since, this sentence has remained the basis for future struggles for the protection of civil rights and civil liberties, and subsequent laws that would prohibit many forms of racial and gender discrimination in the United States.
Journal of Religious Ethics, 2018
In his 1963 response to an open letter from eight white religious leaders chastising his involvement in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that civil rights activists’ blatant breaking of some laws while obeying others was the result of two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. Civil rights activists believed they had a legal responsibility to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Today, new civil rights struggles continue to challenge unjust laws that shred the fabric of democracy that America espouses. Drawing upon both the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, this article argues that unjust laws and practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established. It identifies four ethical strategies for social activism: collective work and responsibility, strategic timing and economic disconnection, political mobilization, and faithful perseverance.