Civil Disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement Analytical Essay by Top Papers

The paper ponders the concept of civil disobedience and when such activity is morally defensible even when it is, needless to say, legally indefensible. The paper looks at Dr. Martin Luther King's conceptualization of civil disobedience and when laws may be disobeyed without fear of moral recrimination; in Dr. King's view, whenever laws hold certain groups in bondage or incite hatred and division (the old southern segregation laws are the best example of this and the laws to which King referred in his "Birmingham jail" letter of 1963), then those laws must be opposed through non-violent protesting, boycotting, or via sit-ins; Dr. King also writes that laws should never be devised primarily with "order" in mind but with justice in mind. The paper subsequently looks at how the notion of natural law or divine law makes an appearance in the American Constitution and also looks at the religious tenets of Christianity and Judaism and how a faith in natural or divine law is manifest in each.