A jurist who deals with Law and Literature

In this post we want to introduce you today to some informations about an important American jurist, who recently has published a very interesting article that we will discuss afterwards. This person is Timothy Sandefur, a principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. The PLF is the first and oldest conservative public interest law firm in the United States and was established for the purpose of defending and promoting individual and economic freedom throughout proceedings before courts.

To that end, PLF attorneys litigate and participate in administrative proceedings with the goal of supporting free enterprise, private property rights, reasonable environmental regulations and the principle of limited government. PLF is a non-profit organization and thus it does not charge for legal services, but instead provides representation in cases which raise important policy issues that go beyond the narrow interest of the parties before the court. Timothy Sandefur heads the Foundation's economic liberty project, which protects entrepreneurs against intrusive government regulations. 
He has successfully challenged occupational licensing restrictions in California, Oregon, Missouri and other states. He also works to oppose eminent domain (government’s right to take private property for public use) abuse and has litigated important eminent domain cases in California, Florida, Missouri and elsewhere. In late 2011, he was named "Appellate lawyer of the week" for his work challenging the constitutionality of the "Patient protection and affordable care act". He is the author of various books as well as scholarly articles on subjects ranging from eminent domain and economic liberty to copyright, evolution and creationism, and the legal issues of slavery and the civil war. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including The Armstrong and Getty show. He is an adjunct professor of law at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and, lastly, has recently published “Love and solipsism: law and arbitrary rules in classical drama”. 

In it, he looks at The Oresteia of Aeschylus, Richard III of Shakespeare, and the Antigones of Sophocles and Jean Anouilh to see what they say about law and tyranny. 

In Oresteia, the title of which derives from the character Orestes, who sets out to avenge his father Agamemnon after his mother's affair with Aegisthus (his mother was Clytemnestra). Orestes decided to kill both his mother and her lover. And in the final part of the tragedy the Athenian citizens are the jurors of the trial to determine the guilt of Orestes. The trial ends with a tie vote, which is enough to free Orestes. T. Sandefur argues that in the Oresteia, we see lawful rule as the domestication of force and the submission of coercion to rationality. In this, he says, law really is like love. 

The play Richard III of Shakespeare depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. And our jurist says that in Richard III we see that the tyrant is a kind of solipsist, who seeks to force the world to comply with his will. 

Antigone tells about the story of a character, who learns that both her brothers are dead. Eteocles has been given a proper burial, but Creon, Antigone's uncle who has inherited the throne, has issued a royal edict banning the burial of Polyneices, who he believes was a traitor. Antigone defies the law, buries her brother, and is caught. When Creon locks her away in prison, she kills herself. In Antigone, Sandefur says, we see the dissident, who clings to truth and justice, refusing to respect the unfair lawfull rules of the tyrant. Antigone is deprived of her ability to be honest, thanks to the pervasive totalitarian state.

Here is the abstract of the article (quale?!?). “What distinguishes the rule of law from the lawless, arbitrary rule of brute force — which can almost interchangeably be described as tyranny or as anarchy — is that in a lawful rule the government’s coercive power operates according to principles of generality, regularity, fairness, rationality and public-orientation, whereas the arbitrary or lawless ruler wields power in the service of his (or their) own self-interest, or by mere ipse dixit. Law is to arbitrariness as reason is to mere will. In this paper, I explore the dichotomy between lawful and arbitrary rule as it has been represented in literature... What emerges from this study is that the basic premise of all lawful order — the root of all secure liberty — is that there is a gap between the will of the ruler and the genuine law. Whenever such a gap exists the ruler’s commands are, in fact, law and the society will, to that extent, become one of lawful order and of (at least some) freedom. The link between tyranny and solipsism is that where the ruler’s will is accounted the law, there can be no genuine law, and thus no freedom. The paradox whereby tyranny is lawless is explained by the fact that tyranny is an attempt to impose by convention what does not originate in nature and in the end, neither physical nature nor the nature of human relationships can be subjected to such commands. The ultimate demand of the lawless ruler(s) is to substitute his (or their) word for the world — to compel the subject to love him (or them). And because that can never be accomplished, arbitrary rule is doomed to eventual collapse”.

Blog di Timothy http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2012/02/index.html

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