Speaker Meaning and the Interpretation and Construction of Executive Orders

Here is an abstract of my latest article posted on SSRN:

ABSTRACT:

This Article explores the interpretation and construction of executive orders using as examples President Trump’s two executive orders captioned “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” (the “Two Executive Orders”).

President Trump issued the Two Executive Orders in the context of (among other things) Candidate Trump’s statements such as: “Islam hates us,” and “[W]e can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred.” President Trump subsequently provided further context including his tweet about the second of his Two Executive Orders: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call [the second of the Two Executive Orders] whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” 

A Sonnet on the Jerusalem Cross

For me, the Jerusalem Cross is endlessly inspiring:  Christ before Paul; the Kingdom that’s within; the wisdom of the Buddha; William Blake and all he tried to do, say, draw, and paint; the semiotics of the endless signified and signifier; the freedom and choice in how we frame; the crosses we bare and bear; the number 5 that I somehow took as “my” number when I was a child.  Such crosses cross beyond mere prose:

               The Jerusalem Cross

Her references are kingdoms built within,

Are centers of what is, are plots of peace,

Are emanations of Blake’s Albions,
Are heavenly vistas of Jerusalems,

Are fresh imaginations testing worlds,

Are fourfold noble truths, are eight crossed paths

That frame a centered cross that wisdom bares

To study all the crosses that it bears.

Her signifiers are two crossing lines,

Four smaller pairs, too, eight paths framing round

Just four right angles centering sixteen more

That also form at most a single square--

Or four or five depending on the count.†

                          *****


†(The cross's lines are personal as well
  In ways they interweave both "H" and "L,"
  In ways they cover Everyone with "E"
  Should some find some initials tough to see.)

 

"Nature Hath Framed Strange Fellows" William Shakespeare and Natural Law

A. Introduction

             

             Natural law theorists might turn to The History of Troilus and Cressida to start building their case.  They might begin with Ulysses’ lofty outline of the “natural” order:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center          

Observe degree, priority, and place,                            

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,                    

Office, and custom, in all line of order,                       

And therefore is the glorious planet Sol                        

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered                         

Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye                         

Corrects the influences of evil planets

And posts, like the commandment of a king . . . .[1]                      

Such theorists might then use Ulysses’ further stirring words to blend such “natural physical order” with a “natural order” in law and morality as well:

Take but degree away, untune that string,                      

And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets                

In mere oppugnancy.  The bounded waters                          

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores              

And make a sop of all this solid globe;                         

Strength should be lord of imbecility,                          

And the rude son should strike his father dead;                 

Force should be right; or rather right and wrong,             

Between whose endless jar justice resides,                    

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.^[2]                             

As far as it goes, it is hard to imagine a more eloquent case for natural law than this.

Gorsuch and Originalism: Some Critiques from Logic, Scripture, and Art

(This blog combines, expands, and end-notes two prior blogs)

Rethinking The Elect

                            The Elect

Take that long-suffering slave:  if she instead

Were master, could descent dissent and shed

Vile arrogance slaves shirk and in its stead

Renounce the life that life inherited?

Take that starved, broken pauper:  if instead

Of life so harsh he often would be dead

He had a fuller purse, was fuller fed

Would he have known to offer paupers bread?

Take that queer soul who's “different”:  if instead

He'd turned out “normal” would he think a dead

Queer's better than a live one, too, and spread

Intolerance majorities have bred?

Is this not Grace?  Spared from such tests as these,

Has God not favored his minorities?

In a time of Trump when I fear many devalue diversity and many more do not see the frequent grace in minority, struggle, and lack of material wealth, I highlight this poem from Charms and Knots.  I also highlight the poem for a time when many no longer appreciate the endless powers of formalist verse.  Apart from the inherent power of sonnet form, twelve same-rhymed lines followed by two fresh rhymes actually participate in the grace and rarity of difference (indexical expression of the point to use Peirce's terminology).

Beyond Words Alone: Poets as Artists of the Intentional

 

In his wonderful The New Book of Forms, Lewis Turco tells us that poets “focus on mode, on language itself.”  Focusing on language, a poet in Turco’s view is therefore an “artist of language; his or her concentration is upon the language itself.”  Taken this way, “[p]oetry can thus be defined as the art of language.”

Though these definitions of poets and poetry are correct as far as they go, they do not go far enough. Poets are artists of the intentional; they are artists using signs that point to things beyond the signs themselves.  Since words are not the only signs, why should poets limit themselves to words?  Using C.S. Peirce’s terminology, there are in fact three kinds of signs: symbols (arbitrary signifiers such as words), icons (signifiers such as paintings that resemble what they signify), and indexes (signifiers like photographs or weathervanes that participate in what they signify).  In the realm of symbols, why should poets limit themselves to words?  In the broader realm of signs, why should poets ignore icons and indexes?  They should not of course, and William Blake gives us excellent proof.   

Double Sonnet of William James: Grace That Brings Good Order in the Head (Addition to "The Apology Box")

            Double Sonnet of William James

                                   I.
  
Descartes, pure mind and body can't be kept

Apart as claimed.  Drawn from experience,

They share a common nature, common sense

That both derive from shared experience.

I am therefore a monist.  I accept
That all is drawn from pure experience:
The body, mind, and all relations.  Hence,
Truth, too, must come from shared experience.

Truth is what works in shared experience.
With free will, physics is indifferent.  Hence,
Determinism turns on how we find

An absence of free will.  Because we find
Determinism horrid, we are led

To free will's higher order in the head.

                            II.

Descartes, why suffer needless doubt except

When something fails to work.  There's little sense

In doubting for the sake of doubt. I've kept

So many years of James I see no sense

In doubting James.  Efficiencies accept

That James exists until experience

Astounds such thinking--I of course accept

Doubt when thought stumbles with experience.

For me, religious doubt makes little sense.
Belief in God disturbs no physics.  Hence,

If God brings better order to my mind,

I'd err denying God.  Of tender mind,

I savor God and angels overhead,
And grace that brings good order in the head.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Ezekiel: The Universe Leaps Over Heart & Head (Addition to "The Apology Box")

Ezekiel’s Double Sonnet

                                                               (A prophet of the exile)
                         I.

A rift ran down the middle of my soul

With halves that tugged perpetually at war

And kept me torn as both a priest and man.

I found that rules and that exceptions can

Be true at once.  Though contradictory,
We must have justice, must have mercy, too,

And must have death although we hear the din

Of dusty bones redressing into skin.

A nation must be punished for its sin,
A nation made of aggregates where one
Thus bears the guilt of all although no one
Is guilty for the deeds another's done:

The father's never guilty for the son
Nor is the child for what the father's done.

                        II.

God's scroll was written to be read. Yet, God
Fed me the message, too.  Sad to the ear
Words somehow tasted honeyed to the tongue.

In honeyed thought, I thought of being young
In Israel again although I knew
That logic stays me.  God, though, had free hand

To seize my hair and whisk me off to stand
Outside the temple walls. I found a hole
Within one wall and peered in where I saw

Beyond facades, beyond exterior awe
To inner awe that dwarfed all things that we
(However wise) have ever felt or said.

The universe leaps over heart and head
Whose terms of course can't curb a universe
Whose essence always brings it back to God.

 © Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here. 

Daniel: Nighttime Hieroglyphics in the Head (Addition to "The Apology Box")

        Daniel’s Sonnet

   (A Jew “exiled” in Babylon)

Through deepest faith, I tapped night's lexicon

That Nimrod changed. Confusion fell upon

More than the day when Babel’s Tower fell.

The language of the night collapsed as well,

And dreams took dialects they’d lacked before.

New gibberish infected night.  Therefore,

Men needed me to translate dreams that hid

Night's messages to them.  Of course, I did.

And when God wrote upon the wall instead

Of nighttime hieroglyphics in the head,

I was the only person who could read

The markings and convey what he had said.

I revel and reveal with words.  They are
Mind's whiskey, its key, and its reservoir.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Augustine: Faith Must Come First (Addition to "The Apology Box")

          Augustine’s Lines and Acrostic

                     (A bishop of Hippo)

Si fallor, sum! I no doubt must exist
However fraught with error since to err

I must be there to do the errant thing.
Pure skepticism therefore can't be true
And truth I set off early to pursue. 

The Manicheans moved my ears with tales

Of light and dark in endless war they proved

Through daily combat of the light and dark,
Through daily rise and fall of suns and stars,

Through all our politicians and our priests

Forever mixed in virtue and in vice--

Such Manichean proof was powerful for

A youthful head untrained in reason or

How easily a fact can be a whore.

In time, I learned the syllogism and

Abandoned Manichean foolishness--

By definition good lacks evil.  Hence,

The good and evil cannot be conjoined

In such theatric struggle.  Thus, I turned
To logic and more careful use of words,

Learned rhetoric, but soon I wanted more--
I'd not forgotten my "si fallor, sum!"  
Through Plato I found changeless Truth and Good
Which briefly brought great pleasure though it vexed
Me next.  If real is really past all change

(Which seems required, too, if God foreknows all),

Must that not mean that everything was set

In stone from the beginning?   Thus poor Eve

Was forced to sin, the serpent to deceive?
I flailed about until I could perceive:

All inquiry of course fails where I am

Beliefless.  Credo ut intelligam--

How can I seek an answer unless I

Am clear first on the means with which to try?
Faith must come first to put some terms in place
That we can use for parsing up a case.

Gathering up my thoughts, I thus confessed

Raw sin throughout my life.  In faith, I'd rest

And pray for undeserved last clemency

Content to rest in God's hands knowing the

Election might have long passed over me. 


© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

The Nicodemus Paradox (Addition to "The Apology Box")

            Nicodemus's Double Sonnet

I saw the merit of that holy man.  I showed

Him bold respect in public and I sat

Beside him as my teacher.   I raised up

My hand in public when I was confused

By his instruction:  “How could an old man

Be born again?”  I asked.  He answered me.

When hypocrites would kill him in the name

Of “God” and “Church,” I interposed myself

And spoke in his defense.  I took the risk

Without a moment’s hesitation, and

When they had murdered him, I helped embalm

And carry the cadaver to a tomb.
With greater powers, I would have helped him more.
But born without them, I could do no more.

Why did I yet remain a “Pharisee”?

There only is one true assembly of

God’s people.  Words cannot change that.  I'd not

Concede my notion of a "Pharisee" to frauds.
Instead, I would protect it by my deeds

That would instead preserve exalted words.

I worshiped with God’s words while others lied

With them.  It was confusing.  Yet, I fought

And even gave my quandary a name:

The “Nicodemus Paradox.”  If we

Use “Church” with scoundrels it’s hypocrisy

Yet if we give them “Church” it’s blasphemy.

With greater powers, I would have wrestled more.
But born without them, I could do no more.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

How the "Ten" Commandments Refute Originalism & Fundamentalism (With Some Help From Herod, Caiaphas & Ahab's Additions to "The Apology Box")

Conservatives often like to claim that texts speak for themselves.  A review of the Ten  Commandments is an easy way to see how such claims are false.  First, such a review nicely shows that we must interject our own judgment even before we start reading a text because we first have to decide what the text is.  When we look for "Ten" Commandments in the Bible, we won't find such a neat list.  Instead, we'll find two places in the Bible (Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:4–21) which support such a list though we could come up with a different number depending on what we expressly include (for example is not bowing down to other gods included in not putting other gods first or is it a separate command?) and depending upon how we group what we find.  The number 10 is thus in that sense arbitrary.  

Second, once we've used our judgment as to the content and number of the list, reading the commandments still requires much interpretation.  For example, read literally they say that we cannot kill.  That would mean we could not cut down a tree much less kill a wild beast attacking us.  Of course, no reasonable person would take these words that literally and thus no honest person who is reasonable would claim we don't have to use our minds and hearts when we read a text.  Instead, what we generally want to do when reading the words of others is to figure out what the speaker meant by those words.  This involves engaging in what philosophers of language call pragmatics, a topic that I have written about elsewhere.  Have Ahab, Herod, and Caiaphas really tried to understand and follow speaker meaning in the poems that follow? 

Third, the Ten Commandments also remind us of another wrinkle in cross-language cases.  The Commandments are in an ancient language that most of us cannot read.  We must thus rely on translations, and translations also involve judgment and often are erroneous or questionable at best. Anyone who tells us that we can and should take a translation literally and without question is thus wrong on multiple levels.

Judas & Pilate Defend Themselves (Additions to "The Apology Box")

            Acrostic of Judas

Justice never punishes a deed

Unless it's evil, willed, and freely done.

Did I betray?  I did.  But fate forced me, 

And thus I did unfreely what the Lord

Set up instead as I shall briefly show.

Impelled by love, God had to make a world

Since isolation is love’s opposite.

Creation needed freedom all around--

An object of one’s love is not enslaved

Raising a contradiction:  what is free

Is free to sin and has a license that

Offends morality.  God's fix required

The incarnation penalty--not me.

Old Testament Words & Rhetoric: Ehud, Elisha, & Jonah (Additions to "The Apology Box")

           Ehud’s Solid Rhetoric

     (Left-handed judge who killed Fat King Eglon)

Somehow it seems we have reversed our roles.

I was to speak for you in judgment, Lord,

In Eglon’s case, yet now must plead my own

Which I presume cannot be severed from

The former.  I shall, therefore, make my case

By how I made your own where you required

More rhetoric than mortals could possess.

With words more flawed and limited than yours,

My noises, meanings, grammars would blaspheme

Should they pretend to speak as you would do.

With proper language absent for the task,

I would but mock ineffability

Were I to mouth in any way the scope

Or purpose of such sacred agency.

Instead I thus used your own elements.

My iron blade made your point. Although his fat

Made heavy armor, it did not deflect

But swallowed up the knife.  His fatty folds

Released a stench that summarized him well,

That underscored your judgment as he fell,

And yet misled his guards by such a smell.^*

Although the spectacle was horrid, it

Avoided sacrilege of words not fit

For godhead or good agents serving it.

*They thought Eglon was relieving himself thereby giving Ehud more time to escape.

            Elisha’s Apology

I watched Elijah leave in fiery flight.

The sound of nothingness roared in my ears.

I was alone.  I trembled, was in tears.

I only had his cloak to calm my fears

As I stepped in to bear bare heaven's light.

Persuasion's manifold.  Elijah thought

The fastest and the surest lesson taught

Was by the rod.  I tried another way:

Example of good deeds can also sway.

I salted down the spring of Jericho

And caused pure waters once again to flow.

I turned the poison gourds into a soup

That safely fed a desperate, hungry group.

I made the axe-head float back to the top

Of that deep Jordan where they’d let it drop.

I took a little bit of barley bread

And made a feast where many mouths were fed.

I filled a widow's empty jars so she

Could pay her debts and set her children free.

I cured the awful curse of leprosy,

And moved men with my skills of prophecy.

Example and good deeds were rhetoric
That served me better than Elijah's stick,
And though no fiery chariot brings me
I trust the light I carry shines on me.

            Jonah’s Defense

With just eight words* I brought a city round.

In rhetoric’s annals nowhere else is found

A rival.  I will move the heavens, too,
And once again will keep my phrases few.

                                                      

I erred once I admit--although I should

Feel gross aversion handling pagan things.

Aversion keeps good order.  God would not

Condemn disgust toward anything unclean.
Instead he counseled that sometimes one should
Endure the filth he'd have one remedy.
Thus, for two reasons he unleashed the whale:
To right my course and in its belly train
Me for the stench ahead.  (I spent three days

Within its filthy gut till I was heaved

A chunk of living vomit on the shore.)

I made my way to Nineveh and gave

The famous speech.  I then withdrew to watch

The consequence. Beyond doubt I'm devout

To take a journey here, too, past the bounds

Of any maps or terms I’ve known.  I've come

(Although in fear) because God called.  I would

Give that as further proof of Jonah’s good.

*"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"  

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here. 

Abelard: The Peril & the Price of Careless Thought (Addition to the Apology Box)

                         Abelard’s Ballade

Thought is the cruelest place where charts mark no

Fixed latitude or constancy of shore

For shifting airy coasts and courses.  Though

Polaris holds without, within one's oar

Has no such brilliant constant marker for

Safe navigation.  Vague, obscure and fraught

With shifting inner shoals, one can’t ignore

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Did man precede the beasts?  Both “yes” and “no”

Say Testaments where just a pair yet more

Go in the ark, where Eve’s made second though

She’s simultaneous in lines before,

Where we’re commanded to love yet restore

Slaves to a master, where it’s said we ought

Not judge yet brook no sin.  We’re fodder for

The peril and the price of careless thought.

There’s such confusion--turn the cheek yet go

Acquire a sword as well?  Why wasn’t more

Care taken in the drafting?  All should know

That words have consequences.  Maimed, I bore

The scars of mixed-up syllables.  Before

More suffer needless butchery, one ought

To master language.  I explored, therefore,

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Lord, thus I did my volumes.  Since they store

All I discovered, I can rest.  Full taught

Below, no suffering here would teach me more

The peril and the price of careless thought. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.