Inquiry #2, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

During a tumultuous time in American history, Martin Luther King Jr. led the movement for civil rights in an honorable manner. At the time he wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he had been thrown in jail for peacefully objecting to the racist Jim Crow laws of Alabama. He was responding to his fellow ministers in the area that were critical of him leading a movement that disturbed the status quo, even though they agreed with him in principle. Dr. King’s thoughts on just and unjust laws especially stood out to me. In the letter he goes over several examples of laws that were very obviously unjust, but what happens if the morality of the laws is not so clear? How do we decide that laws are just or unjust? At first one would say that moral laws are just and immoral laws are unjust. But what sets the guidelines for morality? Dr. King based most of his moral stance on the Christian Bible, but should the guidelines be based upon the views of the majority of the people in a population? Both of these options present problems. Christian values could be viewed as unjust by atheists or people of other religions, and throughout history, the story of the majority neglecting the needs of the minority continually repeats itself. So how does one know whether a law is just or unjust?