{"id":320,"date":"2006-02-08T09:22:45","date_gmt":"2006-02-08T17:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=304"},"modified":"2006-02-08T09:22:45","modified_gmt":"2006-02-08T17:22:45","slug":"civil-rights-and-natural-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2006\/02\/08\/civil-rights-and-natural-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Rights and Natural Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous thread<\/a>, we’ve been having a good discussion about Natural Law and the basis for morality. In light of yesterday’s funeral of Coretta Scott King, I tried to highlight the link between Natural Law theory and the civil rights movement. The question I’m asking is “what reasons justify the civil law?” As I mentioned in the other thread, this question of “reasons” isn’t merely academic. Our ideas about “reasons” have enormous consequences for our ideals of justice and freedom.<\/p>\n

What I’d like to do now is highlight how the concept of Natural Law led to the revolution that is the civil rights movement in America.
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This is a picture of four U.S. Presidents together on the dias at Mrs. King’s funeral. It’s a bit difficult for some of us who were only just born in the ’60’s or later to grasp how extraordinary this scene is. Only 30-40 years ago, the presence of four white male U.S. Presidents at the funeral of an African-American woman would have been inconceivable. Only a bit more than 150 years ago, slavery was still legal in the South and this country was torn by the bloodiest civil war in history. Not long before that, slavery was part of the backbone of the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n

The struggle against racism is far from over, but how did things come so far in such a relatively short time? Here is what Dr. King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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 St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all”<\/p>\n

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. . . . Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is what gave Dr. King’s leadership, and the civil rights movement, its moral force. If Dr. King had said “I have no transcendent basis for my claims; go out and maximize your utlity, with force if necessary,” we would not have the extraordinary picture of white and black leaders mourning and remembering Mrs. King together in peace. This is why “reasons” matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a previous thread, we’ve been having a good discussion about Natural Law and the basis for morality. In light of yesterday’s funeral of Coretta Scott King, I tried to highlight the link between Natural Law theory and the civil rights movement. The question I’m asking is “what reasons justify the civil law?” As I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-5a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}