Balancing Freedom and Restraint: The Role of Virtue in Legal Analysis

                                                                Abstract

Even if one sees the law as “a self-contained system of legal reasoning” from which we deduce “neutral,” non-political conclusions from “general principles and analogies among cases and doctrines” (including formalist claims that judges simply call “balls and strikes” like umpires in a baseball game), one should still consider certain characteristics of the party making such deductions or calling such “balls and strikes.” [Relevant citations to quoted language are in the Article.] If such decision maker has questionable motivations, lacks proper perspective, does not grasp the flexibility in the concepts in play, does not grasp the restraints on concepts in play, does not follow the proper processes involved, and lacks the detail, courage, and tenacity needed to reach the proper “deduction” or “call,” on the face of things the formalist, too, should have reason to re-examine any “deduction” or “call” by such party. Thus, even the formalist should not deny the critical role of virtue when examining legal analysis, a role belying the notion of law as a "self-contained system of legal reasoning."

This Article thus explores basic freedoms and restraints applicable to legal analysis and the role that virtue plays in balancing such freedoms and restraints. Such exploration covers: (i) the origin, nature, and purpose of concepts and categories used in legal analysis; (ii) the experiential nature of the meaning of such concepts and categories used in legal analysis; (iii) the freedoms and restraints applicable to such concepts and categories as a result of either experience or of the concepts or categories themselves; (iv) how workable notions of virtue rightly balance such freedoms and restraints in legal analysis; (v) the distinction between such virtue and skill; (vi) reconceiving the analytically virtuous mean as a proper balance between such applicable freedoms and restraints; and (vii) defining and surveying the particular virtues that lead us to such proper balance and thus to good legal analysis. My hope is that lawyers and law schools in their curricula will follow such explorations as well in a quest to better understand legal analysis and how to teach and perform it well.

Download the full text of this article here.

Keywords: legal analysis, virtue, skill, formalism, character, phronesis, concept, category, hermeneutic pragmatism, Peirce, Rorty, Putnam, deduction, induction, semiotics, legal education, rhetoric

How To Do Things With Signs: An Overview of Semiotics for Lawyers and Others

Click HERE for a link to my current draft of "How To Do Things With Signs: Semiotics in Legal Theory, Practice, and Education."

Abstract

Discussing federal statutes, Justice Scalia tells us that “[t]he stark reality is that the only thing that one can say for sure was agreed to by both houses and the president (on signing the bill) is the text of the statute. The rest is legal fiction."

How should we take this claim? If we take "text" to mean the printed text, that text without more is just a series of marks. If instead we take "text" (as we must) to refer to something off the page such as the "meaning" of the series of marks at issue, what is that meaning and how do we know that all the legislators "agreed" on that "meaning"? In seeking answers here, we necessarily delve into semiotics (i.e., the “general theory of signs”) by noting that meaningful ink marks ("signifiers) signify a meaning beyond themselves (the "signified.") Thus, understanding how signs function is integral to lawyers' textual and linguistic analysis. Additionally, as this article demonstrates, legal analysis and rhetoric are much impoverished if lawyers ignore nonverbal signs such as icons, indices, and nonverbal symbols.

In providing a broad overview of semiotics for lawyers, this article thus (1) begins with a general definition of signs and the related notion of intentionality. It then turns to, among other things, (2) the structure and concomitants of signs in more detail (including the signifier and the signified), (3) the possible correlations of the signifier and the signified that generate signs of interest to lawyers such as the index, the icon, and the symbol; (5) the expansion of legal rhetoric through use of the index, the icon, and the non-verbal as well as the verbal symbol, (6) the nature of various semiotic acts in public and private law (including assertives, commissives, directives, and verdictives); (7) the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts (including contracts as commissives and legislation as directives); (8) the role of speaker or reader meaning in the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts; (9) the semiotics of meaning, time, and the fixation of meaning debate; (10) the impact of signifier drift; (11) the distinction between sense and understanding; and (12) some brief reflections on semiotics and the First Amendment. This article also provides an Appendix of further terms and concepts useful to lawyers in their explorations of semiotics.

Keywords: semiotics, intentionality, signifier, sense, reference, meaning, index, icon, symbol, rhetoric, speech act, interpretation, construction, speaker meaning, reader meaning, originalism, first amendment, intent, contracts, legislation, Peirce, Shakespeare, directive, commissive, verdictive

Fantastic Cognitive Emotion & the Law Symposium Held at Wake Law 2/22/19

Many thanks to the thoughtful speakers and Wake Law Review students who made possible this engaging February 22, 2019 symposium on the inseparability of emotion and reason in legal and other reasoning. The symposium volume will be forthcoming.  Read more about cognitive emotion and the law here.

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.   

LBJ's Villanelle: Old Chamberlain & Chambers of the Heart (Addition to "The Apology Box")

The Johnson name shall live forevermore

At home and overseas.  Of virile heart,

I shall not risk the loss of any war.

I’ll slay Jim Crow and poverty before

Another president can steel the part--

The Johnson name shall live forevermore.

I shall not ape old Chamberlain though war

Endangers plans at home. I've rhetoric's art--

I shall not risk the loss of any war.

No hypocrite, I've nitroglycerin for

Myself as well and lob it at my heart--

The Johnson name shall live forevermore.

Though pills roll out my mouth, I've countless more
To keep me standing as I ply my art:

"I shall not risk the loss of any war.

No, we shall overcome Jim Crow, the gore,

The jungles, and old chambers of the heart.
The Johnson name shall live.  Forevermore,

I shall not risk the loss of any war."

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

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

Cognitive Emotion and the Law

Many wrongly believe that emotion plays little or no role in legal reasoning. Unfortunately, Langdell and his “scientific” case method encourage this error. A careful review of analysis in the real world, however, belies this common belief. Emotion can be cognitive and cognition can be emotional. Additionally, modern neuroscience underscores the “co-dependence” of reason and emotion. Thus, even if law were a certain science of appellate cases (which it is not), emotion could not be torn from such “science.”

As we reform legal education, we must recognize the role of cognitive emotion in law and legal analysis. If we fail to do this, we shortchange law schools, students, and the bar in grievous ways. We shortchange the very basics of true and best legal analysis. We shortchange at least half the universe of expression (the affective half). We shortchange the importance of watching and guarding the true interests of our clients, which interests are inextricably intertwined with affective experience. We shortchange the importance of motivation in law, life, and legal education. How can lawyers understand the motives of clients and other relevant parties without understanding the emotions that motivate them? How can lawyers hope to persuade judges, other advocates, or parties across the table in a transaction without grasping affective experience that motivates them? How can law professors fully engage students while ignoring affective experience that motivates students? Finally, we shortchange matters of life and death: emotions affect health and thus the very vigor of the bar.

Using insights from practice, modern neuroscience, and philosophy, I therefore explore emotion and other affective experience through a lawyer’s lens. In doing this, I reject claims that emotion and other affective experience are mere feeling (though I do not discount the importance of feeling). I also reject claims that emotion and other affective experience are necessarily irrational or beyond our control. Instead, such experience is often intentional and quite rational and controllable. After exploring law and affective experience at more “macro” levels, I consider three more specific examples of the interaction of law and emotion: (i) emotion, expression, and the first amendment, (ii) emotion in legal elements and exceptions, and (iii) emotion and lawyer mental health. To provide lawyers and legal scholars with a “one-source” overview of emotion and the law, I have also included an Appendix addressing a number of particular emotions.

The article can be found here.

Pope Urban II's Double Sonnet: Red Fields and Lucious Palaces (Addition to "The Apology Box")

        Pope Urban II’s Double Sonnet

                               I.

Although we were God's advocate below,

We were a child of Adam, too, brought low

By sin.  We therefore beg forgiveness though

We did our duty.  Bravely, we brought low

The infidels.  Our rhetoric called men to

Jerusalem with swords in hand as Christ

Himself commanded.  Fields ran red with sliced-

Up children, men, expectant mothers, too--

The serpent crushed within the egg can't grow

To blaspheme God or strike at others.  Though

Much bloody work, we had no choice.  Our trust

As shepherds left no option--shepherds must

Protect their lambs.  The Eastern fields ran red

With menaces that shepherds rightly bled.

                                    II.

We tended, too, our wandering sheep inside
The one true church. Thus, to our eastern side
We led the roaming churches back to Rome
While bringing, too, more unity at home

Among the many Occidentals who

Now shared a common venture.  Joined anew,
They focused on a foreign infidel

And Grace that comes from others sent to Hell--

Though we regret our actual person could

Not quit Rome's luscious palaces.  We would

Have joined the foreign danger, blood, and grind

Had our position not kept us behind.

A headless body could not wage a war.

We were the head and lodged in Rome therefore.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016
  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

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.

Simon Magus: Beyond Your Heaven and Beyond Your Hell (Addition to "The Apology Box")

        Simon Magus's Case*

Stand back, Jehovah!  I do not concede
Your jurisdiction over me. Instead,
I’ve secret knowledge shared among the wise

Of greater gods that reign above your head
And rest unstained by your Creation here.

Before this secret knowledge made me wise,

Men used to drag me to your temples where
They made me watch the helpless lambs within

Writhe as men slit their bleeding, bleating throats.

It was no better outside than within. 
There children starved and there poor animals

Would tear themselves apart in roles you made

Of prey and predator.  I saw the scrolls

Recounting other evils you had done.

You made the devil.  You made man without

A sense of right and wrong then punished him

For disobeying orders not to learn

That difference giving knowledge of your wrongs. 

You tainted Lilith and her progeny

Though she obeyed and never bit the fruit.

You baited Cain to murder by your whim

Of arbitrary anger at his gift.

You killed by indiscriminate deluge

Both beasts and infants that could not have sinned.

The common language of survivors you

Destroyed at Babel where (to add insult)

You forced your syllables on men though you

Had once told Adam he could name the world.

You tortured Abraham with felony,

Made him conspire with you to kill his son.

You baited Sodom with slick angels so

You might destroy again--this time with fire.
You burned up infants, animals, and turned

Flesh salt before a husband's frightened eyes.

You tortured your good servant Joseph in

A foreign land whose tongue he did not know

In a repeat of Babel’s cruelty.

Your mind on Egypt then, you unleashed plagues

So horrid I would rather not recount

The sufferings of men or beasts whose blood

You craved on doors or threw down from the sky

Or swallowed up attached to chariots

Beneath the crashing waves that closed on those

Not choked in waters turned to blood before.

For forty years you marched men in the sand

Where you dispensed bizarre rules governing

Such things as beards and testicles of priests.

You called these “laws” so you could claim the right

And pleasure of your awful penalties.

Bored with the desert, you then turned to war

Both in the taking and the keeping of

A “promised land,” an oxymoron of

Word rightly kept to steal another’s ground.

Not only does such evil bring you down.

Your very mouth betrays you, too: "I am

A jealous god!”  Such jealousy requires

An object.  By your own admission you

Have competition and are not supreme. 
Consistent with us both, I thus reject

Your sovereignty Jehovah.  I would dwell

Beyond your heaven and beyond your hell.

*Simon Magus was a Gnostic who tried to solve the problem of evil by creating another and better realm beyond the one in which we live.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

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

Witch of Endor's Double Sonnets: I Accept No Words for Me Except My Own (Addition to "The Apology Box")

    Witch Of Endor’s Double Sonnets

                            I.

I can't deny that I've known sorcery.

Men's words have cast their spells transforming me

Into a "witch" through verbal alchemy

Purporting to change essences of me.

I am a medium I will admit

But there's no shame or villainy in it.

How can it be an evil if I lend

A tongue to Heaven?  Hypocrites defend

The man who does the same when they declare

A "prophet" in their midst though they would tear

A woman into shreds who has the gift--

Unless of course a woman is more swift

In raising Samuel's ghost when trembling men

Must see it quick.  It's right to use her then.

                       II.

At men's request I raised up Samuel's ghost
That wore white veils across its sunken head
And mouth:  "Saul and his sons will soon be dead!"

Saul blanched and swooned. Now done with Samuel's ghost,

Men scorned my charity.  Not needed more,
I was a witch again good men abhor
And suffer not to live--though oddly men
Who have such powers are most godly men.

I  spat upon their terms, spat out my own,
And recognized no languages where few

Monopolize all prophets for themselves

In "piety" no doubt attempting to
Monopolize all profits for themselves.
I accept no words for me except my own.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

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

Sonnet of John The Baptist (Addition to "The Apology Box")

             John The Baptist’s Sonnet

                    (A nomadic herald)

My one principal was God and as

His agent my one principle was God.

One principal and principle meant I

Ignored all call of urban artifice.

God tailored camels for a desert life.

Therefore, I clothed myself in camel skins--

How could mere John design a better wrap? 
With similar logic, I would not  rethink

The locust beans and honey God served there

That I preferred to any urban fare.

I was God's pristine voice that wilderness

Kept pure enough for Christ himself to hear--
Though urban folk were deaf and  Salome
Would have the mouth, not words upon a tray. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

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

Ballade of King John (Addition to "The Apology Box")

                   Ballade Of John Lackland*

            (English king & Richard I's brother)

Although I spilled much blood in France, I would

Have spared it had I means.  But they gave me

No choice.  Vast English lands within France could

Not spurn their sovereign with impunity.

When Anjou, Maine, Poitou and Brittany

Rebelled, I therefore fought.  What choice had one

Who held the crown, who must thus faithfully

Protect the English realm?  God's will be done.

Yet, when the fighting came home, too, I would

Not fight those barons who might murder me

And bring down England, too.  I understood

Consent under duress is legally

Not binding.  With such practicality

I saved the crown and nation.  Having done

So, I proved John would ever faithfully

Protect the English realm.  God's will be done.

Likewise, I fought that "Innocent" who would

Behind misnomers do his treachery

(Like wolves in sheep skin).  Therefore, I withstood

That scheming Roman priest across the sea

Who smelled our English lambs here grazing free.

He would have fleeced them had the Lord picked one

Less faithful, had the Lord not ordered me:

"Protect the English realm!" God's will be done.

O Lord, I only ask for serving thee

Long days for Albion.  When anyone

Presents a threat, King John will forcefully

Protect the English realm.  God's will be done!

*According to various sources, the poet’s 24^th great-grandfather through Thomas Yale and 26^th great-grandfather through Anne Lloyd Yale.

© 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. 

Caesar, Antony, & Brutus (Additions to "The Apology Box")

     Julius Caesar Joins His Cousins

Hail cousins in Olympus!*  Like you, I

Have intervened throughout the world.  I warred

Not just in Rome but in far regions, too,
As god in man no doubt is prone to do.

Why not go far in war since I must war

Regardless?  God and man are opposites

And thus could not keep truces long in me.

They often warred and shook me violently.

I wondered how the two in me were mixed:

Were they both loose?  Were they together chained?

Was one a cage that kept the other pent?

Did they conjoin in some third element?

However joined, despite all paradox,

I came. I saw. I conquered.  I now thank
Rome's daggers that the incarnation's past,

That I'm a pure and quakeless god at last.

*He was an epileptic whose family claimed descent from Venus.

            Brutus’s Defense

Did we do murder?  Not on Caesar’s watch.
Crime is defined within some rule of law.
His tyranny suspended rule of law.

Did we do evil?  Not in killing him

When reason would instead condemn the hands

Refusing reason and its pure demands.

We rescued reason when our blades brought down

The despot flaunting it.  And if we should

Now balance pain, we find the common good

We did outweighs the suffering Caesar felt.

We should be stoic, too, and recognize 

That fate spins narratives and thus denies

The choice required for blame.  And yet so what?

The finest reason never dulls the pain
As past replays itself time and again:

The awful cries, the sounds of blades against

The spine, the red spurts, then the vacant stare
As rigor mortis seizes Caesar there.

I am no hypocrite.  I've suffered, too,
In righting Rome vile Caesar had abused.
I need no flogging.  I'm already bruised.

            Marc Antony’s Defense

Will future generations laud my name?

No. History is pillage victors own.

The vanquished are deprived of it--and yet

I stand before the gods with no regret

Or fear.  The judgment of the gods, I know,

Is never swayed by pillaging below.

Before I fell, in Athens they hailed me

As a new Dionysus.  They were right.

I saw beyond convention.  Nature was

My measure--not some antique prejudice

That drew a line between the West and East.

Uncritical acceptance in me ceased:

I freed my mind and heart to analyze

All things in truth, not prejudice.  I spurned

The ancient, awful bigotry of Rome
Permitting one the lowest Roman wife

Yet banning Cleopatra as a bride.

Pure truth advised me, too, when Caesar died.

I would not profit from his murder.  I

Embraced the bloody vessel that once held

Great Caesar and I promised my revenge.

Whatever evil men might say of me,

I was a loyal friend who also dared

To free both mind and heart Rome once impaired.

© 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.