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JohnBrownDiscussion 11 - 17 Mar 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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| | In class today, I was reminded of Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (available here for those who have not read it before: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html), which I read at the beginning of last semester in conjunction with Walker v. City of Birmingham for the first assignment for Civil Procedure. In Walker, the Supreme Court upheld contempt charges against protesters who disregarded an injunction preventing them from gathering to march or conduct civil rights demonstrations without a permit. The protesters, believing that the injunction was unconstitutional, disregarded it so that they could hold long-planned demonstrations on Good Friday. The court's holding evinces the concern for stability and order that some were alluding to in class today. It suggested that individuals who seek to challenge a law they believe to be unjust must do through the procedure of the courts; challenging an unjust law by disobeying it is not socially acceptable.
King's letter takes a pointedly different view. I would encourage everyone to read it who has not already done so because I would do a disservice in trying to paraphrase, but the main premise is that there is a difference between unjust laws (any law that degrades human personality, any law that the numerical majority compels the minority to follow but does not follow itself, a law out of harmony with moral, natural, or eternal law, any law that is inflicted on a group denied political representation) and just laws (any law that uplifts human personality, that the majority follows, that is in harmony with moral, natural or eternal law). One has a "moral responsibility," King says, to disobey unjust laws. He further states that "one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty...an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." | | | So my question remains - even if you have the courage, then what?
-- JessicaWirth - 06 Mar 2012 | |
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> | This is a really interesting thread. During the week we were reading about John Brown, I kept asking myself whether I could relate to what John Brown did and whether I could do something like that for a cause I truly believed in. I had a hard time accepting comments made in class that because there was massive and systemic violence being perpetrated by the slave-owning classes on the slaves the lives lost through the actions of John Brown were somehow justified or inevitable. This Hammurabi-style argument is, I think, not only ineffective but also inhumane. Killing 10 people in order to save 1000 is in no way justified or heroic no matter how important the cause. The value of life is not quantitative and the innocent that were killed should not be deprived of life in order to save others without choosing to do so. I feel like a lot of what I learn from this class tells me to be rebellious and radical- fight the system from the outside. I think the problem is not that people are not rebellious/radical but that they complain without doing anything. I feel like there is plenty of fighting to be done inside the system. Politicians never truly listen to the poor but they listen to the well-educated experts on poverty, who ostensibly have better knowledge of poverty than the poor. I decided to come to law school to learn to change the system from the inside so that people do not have to engage in acts of violence in desperation. |
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