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ModernLegalMagicCritique1 10 - 06 Feb 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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How was "subjectivity" or "discretion" a sufficient threat to have required magic? Could Frank's theory be influenced by WWII?
(I removed posts by AmandaHungerford and CarinaWallance that address an older version.) | | | When you take a Judeo-Christian based society and interpose on it a secular based legal system, you are bound to find gaps in certainty - i.e. magic as Frank would call it. | |
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< | From the Ordeals to the swearing of oaths, our society has always to some degree relied on relgious beliefs and practices to faciliate the legal process. | >
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- What is a Judeo-Christian based society? There is no such thing as Judeo-Christianity so far as I know. Christians--by which we mean Gentile believers in Pauline and Petrine versions of some scarcely-accessible precedent concepts mostly not originally held or presented by Joshua of Nazareth, a reformist Jew, and written down in Greek, a language of which he was completely ignorant, between 100 and 350 years after his death--have regarded Jews as either "guests and strangers" or enemies to be segregated and murdered for the last thousand years at least. Has everyone forgotten the etymology of the word "ghetto"? Lately, in the time of Reagan, some pre-millennialist American Protestants who support Israel for anti-Semitic reasons and who have noticed that support for Israel and opposition to abortion are held in common with conservative American Jews, began referring to "Judeo-Christian" this-and-that as a pander-marker for a right-wing coalition of convenience. To me, or others in my intellectual and cultural neighborhood, this is language specifically breathing contempt for the actual historical condition of Jewishness, like saying "Some of my best friends are Negroes," and just as ugly. Because I assume for many reasons that you're not using it in that style, I imagine you have something else in mind. What?
-- EbenMoglen - 5 Feb 2008
From the Ordeals to the swearing of oaths, our society has always to some degree relied on religious beliefs and practices to facilitate the legal process. | | | I would infer from the reading, as Daniel pointed out above, that Frank is tracing the evolution of solutions to this problem of uncertainty/magic. My view is that as long as we are a God-fearing society, we will continue to permit various levels of uncertainty within our secular legal system rooted in our beliefs regarding a higher moral being. In other words, swearing to God on a Bible is enough for the swearing in of the President of the United States. I cannot see, any time soon that is, the Judiciary inventing a truth telling robot to make sure the President will faithfully execute the duties of his or her office. I think a little magic is unavoidable.
-- AdamGold? - 05 Feb 2008 | |
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- There is no requirement to swear on a bible, or to swear anything at all, in order to be President of the United States. That would be a religious test for office prohibited by the document itself. You have misread. Someone with historical knowledge of the relevant struggle in the history of English-speaking Christianity and English law, and its profound consequences for American development, should pick up the responsibility to explain here what Article II, Section 1 means by what it actually says.
-- EbenMoglen - 05 Feb 2008 | | | Adam, I don't think "gaps in certainty" is quite on target when it comes to the meaning of MagicAccordingToFrank. To him, magic is more related to attempts to close those gaps that appear objective, but are subjective. | |
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- Actually, magic is a near-synonym for "science."
-- EbenMoglen - 05 Feb 2008 | | | You raise an interesting point about the role of theology. I have always looked at things like swearing on the bible as a show: more form than function. I could be wrong, but I don't believe people get comfort from Bill Clinton swearing, on the bible, to uphold the Constitution. In that sense, his acts were not MagicAccordingToFrank, since they failed to bridge an otherwise treacherous gap with a seemingly objective action.
-- AdamCarlis - 05 Feb 2008 | |
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> | So far, no one has yet correctly explained what Frank thinks relates "magic" to the ordeal, or either one to the fundamental problem, in his view, with the concept of the rule of law. Julia understands magic correctly, and the rest should have flowed from there, but it hasn't.
-- EbenMoglen - 05 Feb 2008 | | | |
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