Sunday, October 04, 2009

“Any law that degrades human personality is unjust”

“[T]here are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust 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 Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’

“… Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

No wonder so many conservatives loathed and feared Martin Luther King, Jr.

source: “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” (1963), The American Reader, edited by Diane Ravitch

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