Spring 2006 High School Edition
Justified Civil Disobedience
Megan O'Hanlon
Formal Essay (11th-12th)
First Place
Canyon View High School
Teacher: Susan Merrell
Socrates, Antigone, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Daniel and the lion’s den, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Henry David Thoreau, Lewis H. Van Dusen, The Boston Tea Party: all of these people, characters, and events have one thing in common: civil disobedience. Many essays, speeches, and letters were written about civil disobedience. Three of the most famous and infamous authors of some of these documents are Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lewis H. Van Dusen, Jr. In these written works a common question arises: Is breaking the law ever justified? Thoreau and King concluded it is justified to break unjust laws, and they defined what they consider to be just and unjust laws. However, Van Dusen disagreed. After analyzing their arguments, I have created my own conclusion. There are certain situations and dilemmas in which breaking the law is completely justified.
Henry David Thoreau, an essayist, poet, diarist, transcendentalist, and abolitionist, spent a night in jail for refusing to pay the poll tax intended to raise money for the war in 1848. After this experience he concluded that “under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison” (379). He expressed this conclusion in his essay “Civil Disobedience.” In this essay Thoreau asked this question: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” (377). He answered this by saying, “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go. . . but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law” (377).
Thoreau believed that a person is required to break the law if the law makes one the agent of injustice. He also believed breaking the law was justified when the government was unjust in its ways: “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable” (373).
He believed an unjust government is one in which the majority rules in all cases and those governed are ignored. “The authority of the government, . . .to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed” (385). In other words, a just government is a government for the people, all the people.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the most influential leader of the civil rights movement. He, like Henry Thoreau, was imprisoned. During this time he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In his letter King explained his reasons for disobeying unjust laws. He wrote that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (390). King explained that he does not want citizens to evade or defy the law because anarchy would follow this action. Instead, he urges those citizens who feel that the law is unjust that if they choose to break the law, they should do it openly and be willing to face the consequences. This way the community will be aroused and will realize the injustice of their ways. This is also the most respectful way. King stated that he tried to make it clear that “it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends” (402). He also implied that direct action should wait until there is no other alternative, and one is left with no choice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. believed it is justified to break unjust laws, and he defined the two different types of laws. Morally and legally, people have the responsibility to obey just laws, and morally, people have the responsibility to disobey unjust laws because “an unjust law is no law at all” (394). A just law is one that squares with the moral law or the law of God, and an unjust law is one that is out of harmony with it. “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust” (394). These are the laws that King believed one was justified to break.
Lewis H. Van Dusen, Jr., a scholar and lawyer, disagreed with Thoreau and King, who said that one can be justified in breaking the law. He argued his points in his essay “Civil Disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy.” In this essay he stated, “Thoreau’s position is not only morally irresponsible but politically reprehensible. When citizens in a democracy are called on to make a profession of faith, the civil disobedients offer only a confession of failure” (409). Van Dusen believed, “There is no man above the law, and there is no man who has a right to break the law. Civil disobedience is not above the law, but against the law” (409). He was convinced that civil disobedience invites anarchy and it spawns more injustices than it removes. However, Van Dusen did quote John Locke when he argued that in some cases one is absolved from obeying the law: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins . . . and the people are absolved from any further obedience. Governments are dissolved from within when the legislative [chamber] is altered. Then the government [becomes] . . . arbitrary disposers of lives, liberties and fortunes of the people, such revolutions happen” (406). He also argued that, “If there is no popular assembly to provide an adjustment of ills, and if there is no court system to dispose of injustices, then there is, indeed, a right to rebel”(406).
In his conclusion Van Dusen stated, “A line must be drawn by the judiciary between the demands of those who seek absolute order, which can lead only to a dictatorship, and those who seek absolute freedom, which can lead only to anarchy. The line, wherever it is drawn by our courts, should be respected on the college campus, on the streets and elsewhere”(410).
After analysis of these documents, I have concluded that there are times and situations when breaking the law is justified and absolutely necessary. Martin Luther King, Jr. had the best arguments, stating people have the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws which contradict the moral law and law of God, and doing it in a way that shows the highest respect for the law. I completely agree with this. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Daniel, those who helped the Jews in Germany and so many others disobeyed laws on the grounds that a higher moral law was at stake, and so would I. This may make me an extremist like some of the others. Nevertheless, I know where I stand.
There is an excellent question proposed by King in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” regarding extremists: “So, the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?” (398).
Works Cited:
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Inquiry. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Edward White. Upper saddle river, NJ: Pearson, 2004. 388-404.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” Inquiry. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Edward White. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004. 370-388.
Van Dusen, Lewis H., Jr. “Civil disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy.” Inquiry. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Edward White. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004. 404-411.
| English Department | College of Humanities & Social Sciences |