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Santa Claus isn't real? | |
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< | The Constitution, however, is not a document handed down from on high, or from mythical "Founding Fathers." It is a set of compromises made by fallible men that has held together for over two centuries by nothing more than a collective willingness to believe.
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> | The Constitution, however, is not a document handed down from on high, or from mythical "Founding Fathers." It is a set of compromises made by fallible men that has held together for over two centuries by nothing more than a collective willingness to believe.
- It's not clear what this sentence means, not because its words are ambiguous, but because "nothing more than a collective willingness to believe" sustains any social institution not dependent on the continuous physical presence of force or the threat of imminent force. And force or the threat of force, it transpires, is not actually stronger than the collective willingness to believe. So discovering that Constitutional faith is a political faith doesn't actually seem to me to contain the deracinating or destabilizing consequence it seems to contain to you.
| | | The Constitution functions as a smokescreen behind which the doings of the government actually take place, and the contradictions between what we, as a nation, say we do (e.g. protect freedom) and what we actually do (e.g. wiretap) are resolved, then, by the magic box of a document no one reads. | |
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- Not all faith is blind faith. Those who read may also believe. And I don't understand the idea of the Constitution as smokescreen, "behind which the doings of ... government ... take place." We have a reasonably public and visible government, to which the Constitution might more reasonably said to stand in the background, only occasionally relevant. The issue presented by the wiretapping which is your example is not primarily whether it is unconstitutional, but whether it is illegal, which is a different and more powerful question.
| | | Law school as demystifier | |
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< | Lawyers know better. At least, they seem to think they do. They've read the Constitution. Not only that, they understand it; how it was molded, what the Framers intended, how it can evolve.
If logic and magic are both structural elements of human thinking, as Frank asserts, then how do we get from the myth of the Constitution (magic) to the myth of understanding the Constitution (magic masquerading as logic)? | >
> | Lawyers know better. At least, they seem to think they do. They've
read the Constitution. Not only that, they understand it; how it was
molded, what the Framers intended, how it can evolve. | | | | |
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> | If logic and magic are both structural elements of human thinking, as Frank asserts, then how do we get from the myth of the Constitution (magic) to the myth of understanding the Constitution (magic masquerading as logic)? | | | | |
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- Not clear what "get from ... to" means. Rhetorically, psychologically, technically? I don't grasp whether you mean that "understanding the Constitution" is a metaphor for understanding the social processes of constitutional discourse (in which case I'm not sure why it is magic at all) or something else entirely.
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ConLaw | |
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< | A Columbia professor recently said that February is the most depressing month of 1L year. While the weather undoubtedly plays a part in this, it is no coincidence that February is when we begin to uncover and do away with the myth of the Constitution.
The anomie, the angst, the unwillingness to do the reading: there is a profound sense of loss that goes along with having one’s assumptions about the world challenged.
Law school, in other words, engenders a crisis of faith.
In Marbury v Madison, for example, we learn that the right of judicial review, rather than being a concept handed down from on high, is simply a fiction created by Marshall out of nothing more than gumption and good writing.
Similarly, Cherokee Nation v State of Georgia reveals, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, that the Supreme Court can make its decisions but without popular, or at least executive, support there is very little it can do to enforce them.
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> | A Columbia professor recently said that February is the most depressing month of 1L year. While the weather undoubtedly plays a part in this, it is no coincidence that February is when we begin to uncover and do away with the myth of the Constitution.
The anomie, the angst, the unwillingness to do the reading: there is a profound sense of loss that goes along with having one’s assumptions about the world challenged.
- This seems to report as universal an idiosyncratic intrapsychic tendency. Having assumptions about the world challenged can also be invigorating and productive.
Law school, in other words, engenders a crisis of faith.
- Depends? My faith didn't enter crisis because of law school. Perhaps this depends on one's previous expectations?
In Marbury v Madison, for example, we learn that the right of judicial review, rather than being a concept handed down from on high, is simply a fiction created by Marshall out of nothing more than gumption and good writing.
- What "on high" could it have been handed down from? Is this not a truism dressed up as a catastrophe? At a minimum, why is that a deflating as opposed to an empowering discovery?
Similarly, Cherokee Nation v State of Georgia reveals, to
paraphrase Andrew Jackson, that the Supreme Court can make its
decisions but without popular, or at least executive, support there is
very little it can do to enforce them.
- And this was a discovery? Could one have studied any history or political theory, of any society, without observing the ultimate dependence of adjudication on the actual behavior of those controlling the public force?
| | | The Supreme Court, it is revealed, has neither a solid mandate to make many of its decisions nor the power to enforce them. The work of ConLaw (and, similarly, other 1L classes) seems to be to break down our implicit assumptions about American government. | |
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- Where did these implicit assumptions come from? If I consult an old high school civics text it will make that point about the Supreme Court.
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Hot Cockalorum | |
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< | The most important work of law school is not in breaking us down but in remolding us in the image of "the lawyer."
There is, then, a two-fold purpose in rebuilding our faith in the Constitution and the law. It is difficult (if not impossible) to function in the world without a belief system, and law students are no exception to this rule. Becoming versed in the obscure rituals of the law community thus provides lawyers with an alternative to the rituals of American society-at-large; it also, more practically, serves to preserve the profession of the law, and thus the ability to obtain money from those who have yet to learn the code. | >
> | The most important work of law school is not in breaking us down but
in remolding us in the image of "the lawyer."
There is, then, a two-fold purpose in rebuilding our faith in the
Constitution and the law. It is difficult (if not impossible) to
function in the world without a belief system, and law students are no
exception to this rule. Becoming versed in the obscure rituals of the
law community thus provides lawyers with an alternative to the rituals
of American society-at-large; it also, more practically, serves to
preserve the profession of the law, and thus the ability to obtain
money from those who have yet to learn the code. | | | How do we rebuild our myths?
How these myths are rebuilt and reshaped is still a mystery to me. As law students we all acquire a language that sets us apart from those not in our particular culture. We also learn a reverence for actions that we were unaware of before law school; for artful opinions, for well-argued briefs, for, perhaps, one school of interpretation or another; and we relearn a belief in the ability of legal words to shape the doings of the world.
The shock of the tenuousness of the law and of the pervasiveness of legal constructions (lies) gives way to admiration and even adoration. | |
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> | is | | | Is it possible to function in a magicless society?
Arnold starts from “the assumption that social creed, law, economics, and so on have no meaning whatever apart from the organization to which they are attached” (23), and expounds this theme quite convincingly.
The law should be about protection. The value of the Constitution, then, is as a symbol; we can’t exist as a society without a collective belief in the idea that we have definable rights which have their source in something external and knowable.
| | | Our work as law students lies not just in understanding and then rebuilding our core societal myths but in remembering that that is what they are. Things might be what they do, not what they’re called; that doesn’t mean that what they are called is unimportant. Words, like myths, can obscure, can manipulate, can create hope or dash it; words can become so disconnected from acts that they become more important than the work they are doing.
The search for truth, then, is just a distraction. Perhaps our most important work is recognizing the power that comes with mastering these obfuscations and remembering to use it (responsibly? but here we come to another question altogether). | |
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- I find this conclusion a little puzzling. I don't understand the causal relations among the first four sentences. They don't seem to me to constitute a sequence or the development of an idea. I also don't understand the third and fourth paragraphs in relation to one another. What symbols do is said to be important, and I agree, but that doesn't seem to lead (if it is what the third graf establishes) to either of the sentences contained in the fourth.
- In general, it seems to me, the essay relies heavily on premises that seem to me unestablished, or counter-intuitive. I don't want to deny the reality of the "anomie caused by challenge to assumptions" narrative or the "judicial review not sent down from on high" disillusionment, because for all I know those experiences are your experiences, and are as real as mine. But I find them difficult to believe in as widespread phenomena. And if they aren't general, what becomes of the rest of the analysis?
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< | | MASTER OF ALL MASTERS
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> | MASTER OF ALL MASTERS
| | | A Girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. At last a funny-looking old gentleman engaged her and took her home to his house. When she got there, he told her that he had something to teach her, for that in his house he had his own names for things. He said to her, "What will you call me?"
"Master or mister, or whatever you please, sir," says she.
He said, "You must call me 'master of all masters.' And what would you call this?" pointing to his bed.
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