The Poetry of the Law
posted by Nate Oman
At Law Day dinners and law school commencements, judges and lawyers like to wax eloquent about the “poetry of the law.” I wonder, however, how many poems there are about specific legal rules. They do exist. As proof, I offer the following verse, which I discovered this morning, on the fellow servant rule:
“Butch” WeldyAfter I got religion and steadied down
They gave me a job in the canning works,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard with gasoline,
That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
To heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The air grew still and it seemed to heave,
And I shot up as the tank exploded,
And down I came with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs
For someone left a blow-fire going,
And something sucked the flame in the tank.
The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.
And I sat on the witness stand as blind
As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over,
“I didn’t know him at all.”
Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006), 26. (originally published 1914)
Masters, in addition to the poetry, practiced law in Chicago and Spoon River Anthology, a series of over 200 poems spoken by the people buried in the cemetary of Spoon River, Illinois, is filled with legal references. Indeed, many of the plots that weave their way through the backgrounds of the poems involve legal issues: there is a muder trial, an abortion prosecution, a bank fraud, and — of course — industrial accidents. None of the cases would make good exam hypos, but Masters does have a nice sense the laws interaction with humanity. In particular, the poems are legally precise in their references, but the characters in the poems are almost always legally ignorant (although there are a number of judges and attorneys). Hence, you get a vivid sense of the tragedies of ordinary life caught up in the abstractions of the law. Masters does write in the muck-raking tradition of Theodore Drieser and Upton Sinclair, however, at at times one wishes that his bankers and judges weren’t so relentlessly venal, evil, and Calvinist. As yet, I haven’t hit any contract cases, but it is still worth a read for the poesy inclined law geek.
November 27, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Posted in: Law and Humanities
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Responses (3)
Christian Miller - November 28, 2007 at 10:19 am
Would opinions written in verse count as poetry of the law? The one that comes to mind is Judge Becker’s opinion in Mackensworth v. American Trading Transportation Co., 367 F. Supp. 373.
SusanS - November 28, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Maybe there is hope for you Nate, oh lawyer that you think you are.
Anon. - December 5, 2007 at 3:20 am
Several Gilbert & Sullivan songs would qualify.
examples include a couple songs from Iolanthe.
http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/iolanthe/web_op/iol07.html
http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/iolanthe/web_op/iol12.html
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