Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Due February 19, 2009

Comparing Two Descriptions of The Law

Following this page, there are two descriptions of “The Law.” The first is a poem by WH Auden; the second is a quote from President Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father.

Your assignment is to explain in your own words what each author believes the law to be and to point out similarities and differences of the two descriptions. You must write at least one page explaining the Auden poem, at least one page explaining Obama’s statement, and then at least one page comparing and contrasting the two. If you wish, you may then add your own interpretation of the law and your opinion of Auden’s and Obama’s works. Be sure, however, as in your journals, to keep your factual discussion separate from your personal opinions. Your grade will depend on how well you present your analysis and discussion, and how well-reasoned, justified, and convincing your paper is.

Be sure to consult the “Helpful Hints” page on the course Web site.

This paper is due to me electronically by the start of class on February 19 (delayed because of the ice storm). It is worth 50 points.

Law, say the gardeners,
is the sun,
Law is the one All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I've told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.
And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,
Like love we can't compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.

… The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power — and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.

But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.

We hold these truths to be self-evident. In those words I hear the spirit of [Frederick] Douglass and [Martin] Delany, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln; the struggles of Martin [Luther King] and Malcolm [X] and unheralded marchers to bring these words to life. I hear the voices of Japanese [-American] families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives. I hear the voices of the people in [the deteriorating, crime-ridden Chicago housing project] Altgeld Gardens, and the voices of those who stand outside this country’s borders, the weary, hungry bands crossing the Rio Grande. I hear all of these voices clamoring for recognition, all of them asking the very same questions that have come to shape my life, the same questions that I sometimes, late at night, find myself asking the [ghost of my father]. What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love? The answers I find in law books don’t always satisfy me — for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed. And yet, in the conversation itself, in the joining of voices, I find myself modestly encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail.