Morality of the Law essays

Morality of the Law essays Civil disobedience is the resistance to unjust laws. Henry David Thoreau sparked this revelation when he wrote Civil Disobedience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used many of the ideas of Thoreau to expand on the ideas of civil disobedience when he wrote Letter From Birmingham City Jail. Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. both used civil disobedience as a way to improve the law and require society to abide by higher morals, but in todays society civil disobedience is used solely to change unjust laws while society lowers their moral standards to that of the law. Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience in response to the American involvement in the Mexican War as well as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. He viewed them both as immoral and wrong and he believed that if the law is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law (Thoreau). Thoreau felt this agent of injustice to be America against Mexico in the Mexican War, as well as the slaveholder against his or her slaves by the Fugitive Slave Act. He went so far as to reject the United States government as his government by saying I cannot for an instance recognize that political organization as my government which is the slaves government also (Thoreau). Thoreau also said under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison (Thoreau). This belief that one must break an unjust law and accept the punishment is the main tenet of civil disobedience. Thoreau also said that one must take direct action for change to take place. One must cast [their] whole vote, not just a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence (Thoreau). Thoreau is saying that one cannot just think of doing right, or even believe it. They must take direct action. Only through direct act...