Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in 1963 in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, that “A just law is man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. Unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” That distinction is lost on those members of the Alabama legal establishment who have announced that, as Attorney General Bill Pryor put it, “My responsibility is to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, and I will be doing my duty...”
Let’s not forget that this country was founded when some very brave state officials gathered together to defy the “rule of law” of King George III. The Founders said his “rule of law” was aimed at “absolute tyranny” over the states. So they acted in a fashion consistent with a long Western legal tradition that dates at least to St. Augustine, who said, “An unjust law is no law at all...”
But when, as in America at its founding, the state recognizes a higher law — the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” — liberty endures, as our own history powerfully demonstrates...
But, in the exceptional instance where a court usurps the will of the people and acts in a manner intended to destroy the foundation on which our freedom rests, it is the right, indeed the duty, of elected officials to call that act what it is, tyranny, and to refuse to obey...
Doug's Blog
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