​Welcome to SEE's Reasoning with Ethics page.  The following case  and linked pages (right margin)  are provided to help support class discussions or essay assignments with a focus on ethical reasoning, which is a supporting factor for student character formation.  

​A free subscription with a weekly email that includes a current events case and guided questions to support ethical discussions is available.

​SEE encourages the strategy described here to be applied beyond current events cases and to included analysis of relevant cases in history, literature and life.

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Cases can be used as
• Class discussion starters
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• Social studies, health or      ethics class analysis
Dr. King and Ethical Analysis of Law
January 20, 2020
Letter from a Birmingham Jail

With the celebration of Martin Luther King Day on Monday, January 20, students can be reminded of one of Dr. King’s greatest written legacies. In his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King provides the ethical analysis needed to support the nonviolent, civil disobedience campaign he was leading to undo Jim Crow laws in the south. These laws supported the policies of segregation and humiliation of blacks.
 
Dr. King studied the strategy of nonviolent protest to achieve social change from the example of Gandhi and his efforts to win India’s independence from Great   
Click the following links for more background-
At the Newseum in Washington, D.C., students from Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School read excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" on the 50th anniversary of its publication.  -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujmibAbxvmA
 
Synopsis of what drove King to write the letter and then at 1:22 a speaker reads a passage regarding Moral Law. -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSPKtK1sm3w
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Documents associated with Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Excerpt from Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Britain. Leading nonviolent protests and marches upset some southern religious leaders who wrote Dr. King and asked him to stop the civil disobedience protests and seek to negotiate change. King’s reply, written while under arrest in Birmingham, Alabama, argued that not all laws are just and makes a clear case for determining the difference between just and unjust laws.

The arguments require more space than this blog allows, but students are encouraged to use the Blog’s links to read the excerpted letter, listen to student reading passages, and respond to the following questions.
​What factors does Dr. King suggest define a just or unjust law? What core values would be demonstrated if you participated in one of King’s civil disobedience protests? If you were 18 years old in Birmingham, Al in 1963, would you have participated in a civil rights protest?
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Thoughts on the case? We want to hear them!

​​​Ethics in action creates character