Finding Jupiter Optimus Maximus
posted by Nate Oman
It is not a horribly original point, but Americans expect a great deal from their courts. If we have some nasty and apparently insoluble social problem, we take it to the men in black robes and expect them to give us wonderful oracular solutions to our problems. (Amazingly, despite two centuries of failing to provide wonderful oracular solutions to social problems, we still go to court!) And of course, we surround our courts with this oracular mystique. The judges wear priestly robes. They emerge from within an inner sanctum in which they commune with the ineffable wisdom of the law. The Supreme Court Building is modeled on a Greek temple, not only in its exterior architecture, but also in its inner lay out. An entrant to the building passes through a succession of courts, each grander than the last. Admission to each court is more closely controlled, until finally one is ushered into the soaring court room where the justices emerge from behind the veil. In ancient and less judicially ambitious times, this architectural experience would have marked a symbolic assent into the presence of the gods, where the priests emerged from behind the veil that shrouded the Ark of the Covenant or the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
Apparently, we Americans learn this reverence (idolatry?) for the law early. A few weeks ago, I took my four-year-old son with me to the law library to pick up some books. As we walked past shelf upon shelf of the federal reports, my son asked me what those big books were. I pulled down a volume to show him, thinking that I would explain to him what a case and an opinion are. No need. He took one look at the double columned agate type on foolscap paper, and said, “Oh. It’s the scriptures.” I looked down and realized that the reporters do look suspiciously like the family Bible. It would seem that even in our book binding, the law apes the sacred.
August 24, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Posted in: Architecture, Religion
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Responses (4)
KipEsquire - August 24, 2006 at 2:35 pm
“Rather it seems that more concrete examples or perhaps in this case more robust theoretical explanations and models are needed to make the case.”
Okay: Wireless telephony follows the pricing equivalent of Net Neutrality. Cable television does not and charges both subscribers and content providers for access.
Which has been the better “competitive and innovative” success story over the past twenty or so years?
KipEsquire - August 24, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Wrong post, sorry.
Patrick S. O'Donnell - August 24, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Of course this goes back in our civilization to at least the Seven Sages, ‘a group of wise men who exemplified the characteristics and ideals of the ancient Greek rulers, lawgivers and advisors during the time period of 620-550 BCE.’
It is interesting to compare classical China in this regard inasmuch as ‘legalism’ was in opposition to ‘Confucianism,’ the latter preferring social norms, etiquette, etc. (li) as the ideal means for achieving both requisite and ideal forms of social cooperation. Although, historically, Chinese regimes propagated parts of the Confucian ethos in conjunction with a rule of law of sorts (see Randall Peerenboom on this).
Personally, I have little problem with this aura of ‘the sacred’ surrounding law for, as I note in a comment to Dan Filler’s post today, I think an ethic of transgression has taken hold of our culture, encouraging, if only indirectly (spillover or by-product effect), disrespect for the rule of law, and a corresponding lack of appreciation of our constitutionally circumscribed legal system (those who’ve attended law school might not be best placed to see this). Circuitously or tangentially related to this, but not helping matters, are recent works by Waldron, Tushnet and Kramer that endeavor to weaken the role of the judiciary vis-a-vis the other branches. It seems conservatives and (putative) liberals alike have joined hands in opposing judicial review, a troubling trend from my admittedly limited vantage point (here I follow Chemerinsky in his debate with Tushnet in Legal Affairs). I find this disturbing insofar as that ‘while [there exists] an implicit when not tacit recognition by judges that the bulk of claims for constitutional justice are the prerogative and obligation of popular political institutions’ (Lawrence Sager), in effect this means the legislative and executive branches are more structurally liable to abuses of power, while the judiciary, on the other hand, operates within structural and procedural constraints that leave it less prone to such abuses.
Wayne Butler - August 26, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Perhaps the reason law books and the Bible have a similar two column page is because the material is sometimes difficult to follow when it is spread out across the page. Unlike a novel.
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