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In King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, he address a question he finds himself constantly needing to answer--from the media, from critics, from American citizens: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” <ref>See: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf</ref> In other words, King is defending himself against the legalist, who might claim that individuals should always follow the law--that following the law is the definition of justice. According to King, such an appeal is simply ludicrous because justice is not synonymous with the law. Ideally, the law should be a beacon of justice, but there are times when it is not. We judge whether or not a law is good or just, according to King, by seeing if it squares rightly with the moral law or the law of God. In order to defend this view, King appeals to two philosophical authorities: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Both of these Christian philosophers are famous for championing notions of justice that supersede the temporal order. Essentially, real justice is God’s justice because God is the true lawgiver. King claims that segregation laws are not in line with God’s justice because they are built upon an illusion of difference, they devalue the intrinsic value and equality of every human being. As King explicitly states they do not “uplift human personality.” Thus, King’s Christian faith gave him a concept of justice that was both objective and extrinsic to the social order, giving him the logical defense for breaking unjust laws propagated by the American government or the state of Alabama. Because of this, King argued that men and women are not only just in breaking unjust laws, they are morally obligated to do so. Continuing to obey unjust laws is to aid in their perpetuation, which would be a violation of justice.