Socrates", Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X's Positions on Law.
After reading Plato's Crito, Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail", and Malcolm X's "The Bullet or the Ballot", it is clear that all three of these men were attracted to the natural conception of a law, which holds that an unjust law is not really a law. However, it is also clear that Socrates had a contrasting different view on a citizen's obligation to obey the law.
The Crito is a dialogue, written by Plato, that takes place in Socrates" prison cell where he awaits execution. In this dialogue, Socrates" good friend, Crito, presents several arguments in which he tries to convince Socrates to escape death and flee Athens. However, through several arguments of his own, Socrates eventually convinces his friend that complying with the death sentence, which was unjustly place upon him, is more important than any of Crito's concerns. Throughout this dialogue, Socrates searches for the moral value of a plan to escape from jail to a life of voluntary exile and does not find one.
The last and most practical argument that Socrates makes against escaping from prison is that if he does so he will be knowingly disobeying the laws that has granted him certain rights and protected him throughout his life. He believes that laws and customs cannot exist without the respect for them. To him, laws are like parents insofar as they play an important role in a person's upbringing and improvements. Without them his life and activities would not have been possible. Also, Socrates believes that by remaining in the State and existing under its laws, one has entered into an implied contract with the State to follow its laws. Therefore, to do injury to these laws by breaking them is just like disobeying one's parents, rejecting the author of one's education, and breaking a contract to abide by the laws of the State from which you have gained so much.
