I am grateful to Prof. Christine Corcos for inspiring to write an essay for her forthcoming second volume of Law and Magic which will be published by Carolina Academic Press. Here is a preview of the essay:
Abstract
This essay explores two senses of “magic” as they apply to the practice of law: magic as “the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand” and magic as “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.”
Magic in the initial or “sleight of hand” sense overlaps with jurists’ emphasizing certain traits of a classification while hiding other nonconforming traits. For example, if the Great Blackstone classifies the Little Prince’s drawing of a boa eating an elephant as a drawing of a hat, the Great Blackstone must draw attention away from other contrary evidence such as the Little Prince’s asserted intent. Similarly, if he would classify Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit as a rabbit, the Great Blackstone must also draw attention away from contrary evidence. (Thus, the use of “Hats” and “Rabbits” in this essay’s title.)
Magic in the second or “supernatural” overlaps with jurists’ creation, modification, and rejection of categories and concepts (including conceptual metaphors). Categories and concepts (including conceptual metaphors) are creatures of language and not nature. Thus, jurists’ creation, modification, and rejection of categories and concepts (including categories and concepts about nature itself) are beyond nature and thus powerfully overlap with magic in the second, “supernatural” sense.
To the extent jurists perform magic in either or both senses, such magic can be divided into either bright or dark magic. Jurists’ “bright magic” illuminates in ways that better and better organize experience (including moral experience). Lacking such light, jurists’ “dark magic” does the opposite. For example, stressing the role of commitment to and partnership with a loved one as essential to marriage while downplaying past opposite sex requirements would be bright magic to the extent such emphasis advances moral and social progress. Stressing past opposite sex requirements while ignoring core roles of love, commitment, and partnership would be dark magic to the extent inconsistent with advancing moral and social progress. Good jurists’ “magic” thus organizes experience (including moral experience) in better and better ways. Good jurist magicians are therefore good pragmatists: their bright magic organizes experience (including moral experience) in better and better ways.
In examining such juristic magic, this essay also explores among other topics: (i) magic in legal imagination and in legal framing (foreground, background, and otherwise); (ii) magical insights for jurists from the art of translation and other humanities including the dark magic of using wrong or questionable translations of ancient texts such as the Bible when making tradition or other arguments (such as using wrong or questionable translations of "arsenokoitai" or "malakoi" or incomplete contexts for "para physin" when exploring same-sex rights and privileges) ; (iii) the dark magic of legal formalism; and (iv) dangers of juristic and political dark magic to democracy and rule of law.
