The Logic of Legal Discourse

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten:

Let's look at this recent verbiage from you in another thread:

----"People in authority who have been declared the ultimate arbiters on facts and law have been proven wrong. The Earth is the center of the universe is a good example."

This commentary betrays a basic misconception common in the thought processes of many tax protesters. The tax protesters believe that through their own idiosyncratic version of "reasoning" or "logic," they have come to the correct conclusion about the law -- and that the courts, the vast majority of lawyers, CPAs, law professors, etc., etc., are incorrect because reasoning of the courts, the lawyers, etc., is somehow flawed.

Secular law, the set of rules enforced by government, is fundamentally different from the laws of science (e.g., the Earth in the center of the universe, etc.). I think we agree that if Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is a correct explanation of how the universe works, it is correct not because Einstein is recognized as an authority by the "system" of science or physics, but rather because the Theory accurately explains how things actually are. That's a bit tautological, but it illustrates the point: Even if Einstein is correct, the universe is the way it is not because Einstein (as an "authority") said so, but because -- well -- the world is just the way it is.

Secular law, however, is different. Under the U.S. legal system, the law is WHAT THE COURTS RULE THE LAW IS. This is a fundamental characteristic of the U.S. legal system itself. This means that judges are correct in their actual RULINGS about what the law is not because they have correctly deduced answers using what tax protesters feel are good rules of "logic", but rather because the "precedent" itself IS law (case law). Judges are correct in their rulings because, under the U.S. legal system, a ruling is BY DEFINITION a statement of what the law ACTUALLY IS -- until and unless that ruling is reversed (e.g., ruled erroneous) by a higher court or otherwise overturned by other legal action. (I'm oversimplifying here to make a point.)

In law school, I took a course called "Logic of Legal Discourse." Among other things, we studied the texts of actual court cases where the courts used flawed "logic" (in the sense of the accepted rules of logic you would study in a basic college philosophy course). The mere fact that a court uses flawed "logic" to arrive at a decision does not make that decision any less A CORRECT STATEMENT OF WHAT THE LAW IS (until and unless that decision is overturned, etc.) I know this may be a difficult concept to get your hands around.

You, like many tax protesters, are trying to "reason" your way to what you feel should be a correct statement of law. I see this all the time. The disagreement that tax protesters have with the courts over tax law involves in large part a disagreement over what law itself actually is. The fundamental concepts of jurisprudence and legal analysis that apply to the study of contracts, property, torts, criminal law, etc., also apply to taxation. The problem for the tax protesters is that they don't want to accept that. By attempting to reject the decisions reached by the courts on how tax law works, the protesters are effectively saying (without realizing it) that the rules of analysis that govern all areas of law (contracts, property, etc.) should not apply to taxation, that taxation is some sort of "special case." Unfortunately, that position is incorrect.

The protesters rely on incorrect idiosyncratic "reasoning" rather than correct jurisprudential reasoning - the actual rules of the logic of legal discourse. The protesters rely on their own idiosyncratic beliefs about logic and how they believe logic "should" work, how logic "should" be used, to arrive at correct legal conclusions, when what protesters should be doing is applying the ACTUAL rules of legal analysis embodied in our legal system based on the EXPERIENCE of real people in that system.

To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes: The life of the law is not logic; the life of the law is experience.

Under the U.S. legal system, the proper study of law involves many things, but that study is in large part the study of case law -- how courts have ruled in the past, for the purpose of trying to predict with some reasonable accuracy how a court will actually rule on a given issue in the future. The proper study of law is not a strained, idiosyncratic effort to determine what the tax protester believes the law should be, using what the tax protester feels are rules of "logic."

You will never come to the correct conclusions about Federal income tax law using the methods of "reasoning" you are using. Yours, Famspear

[LPC]

Under the U.S. legal system, the law is WHAT THE COURTS RULE THE LAW IS.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once wrote something that was slightly different and, I think, more accurate:

“The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact and nothing more pretentious are what I mean by the law.” The Paths of the Law (1897).

So, when a statute is clear and unambiguous, or a regulation is within the scope of a statute, we expect that the courts will enforce the statute or regulation as written. That "prophecy," which embraces both the legislative statute and the judicial function, is what we call "law."

This is actually a corollary of a slightly different idea, which is that “the only definition of law for a lawyer’s purposes is something which the Court will enforce.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, 7/3/1874.

In other words, and contrary to what tax protesters think, law is not an abstraction that exists separate from the reality of what happens in courtrooms. The concept of "law" only has meaning as it has consequences, and it only has consequences if a court does something. So the concept of "law" cannot be separated from the actions of courts. A "right" that cannot be enforced in court is not a "right" in any sense recognized by a lawyer.

The third mistake that tax protesters make is in their assertions that, if the courts have that much power, then the courts are tyrannical. But this assertion overlooks a number of restraints on judicial power:

1. Most rulings by judges can be appealed to other judges, so no one judge has much power.

2. Most rulings by judges are based on statute, or can be changed by statute, so the legislators (and indirectly, the voters) can change judicial rulings that they don't like.

3. Even constitutional rulings can be changed by amending the constitution when the ruling is bad enough. See, for example, the 16th Amendment, which was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in order to over-rule the Pollock decision and allow Congress to tax all incomes without apportionment. (Tax protesters rail against the ratification process and the meaning of the amendment because they simply refuse to believe--and it drives them crazy to think--that there was ever that much popular support for a general income tax.)

4. Most judges are either elected by voters (in many states) or must be confirmed by elected representatives (e.g., the Senate in the case of federal judges), which means that issues that are important to the voters can affect the selection of judges and so affect judicial rulings over time.

5. Judges can't really enforce their own rulings, but rely on the cooperation of the other branches of government to enforce their rulings. It is the executive branch that controls the guns, and the legislative branch that controls the purse, and a judge that issues an order that is just too far out of line might find that there is no one who will enforce it.

[silversopp]

And don't forget that role the jury plays. I've heard (I wasn't around) that during Prohibition, jurors would often acquit a man that they knew was breaking the law. If a law is so bad that it enjoys widespread hatred, the jurors will recognize that they have the power to decide who does or does not go to jail.

[Disilloosianed]

Juror nullification, however, is not something to be celebrated. It actually is a violation of the rule of law, albeit one that has no ready solution.

[John J. Bulten]

Hi Famspear,

First, please verify who actually stated that quote and post your results, as I don't recall stating it, and I'm too lazy to check whether it was actually SteveSy.

Second, the "supreme law" is the Constitution, Statutes and treaties, not codes and cases (and not to mention the Bible). So case law is somehow inferior to supreme law by definition. I summarize this by a different aphorism: the law is what Congress says it is (the Statutes).

Third, when case law contradicts supreme law, it is clearly void. It is impossible to obey a contradictory law. If the same law with the same authority says you must do X and you must not do X, how can it be called law at all? It meets your fundamental test of having been promulgated by officials empowered to enunciate law (statutes or cases), but it does not meet the more fundamental test of noncontradiction. Since you have sworn to uphold the law, you will need to decide for yourself whether that law is noncontradictory or potentially contradictory.

Now Famspear, I think I can reason with you in a manner unlike the other folks here. You're actually opening a philosophical argument, and one that has prima facie or first-glance consistency. You have admitted the authority of "law", and have defined that as "what the courts rule the law is". Most regulars do not admit any authority, whether truth, or logic, or law, or forum etiquette, or right to petition for redress.

When you try and pin down what "law" means, though, you are immediately challenged. If "law" means the written rulings of all courts (whether considered ideally as if in one book, or really as in many widespread documents issued by courts which are compiled in books with occasional miscopying), you have to figure out what constitutes lawful courts and rulings. Unconsciously, you're relying on your legal training to be able to tell the difference, or perhaps you're relying on the Constitution or other law.

If I came to you saying I'm an Article 3 Court with jurisdiction and my ruling of law is that Pete's case is dismissed, you'd be forced to rely on some authority more fundamental than "what the courts rule the law is". Since you don't know for absolute certainty that I'm not an Article 3 Court using a clever pseudonym, you might ask for documentary proof, like an oath of office, or a statute granting jurisdiction, or demonstration of appearance of Pete and Bob Metcalfe before me. But you'd have to, at minimum, abandon the position that "law" is as simple as what the courts rule the law is. (Especially if you hold the position that it's possible to receive judicial notice from anyone no matter how unqualified. Well, you're on notice that my court has ruled that Pete's case be dismissed.)

Now once you resort to your background authority, whether it be legal training, Constitution, other law, etc., you'd eventually realize it too is based on further authority which you have accorded it. The legal training and laws are under the auspices of the Constitution, the Constitution is a creation of We the People, etc. Laws in other nations are created by men as well, sometimes as longstanding public documents, sometimes as whim. And laws are written in human languages, which change from time to time and are often twisted and infiltrated.

Ultimately, "law" means a conceptual system of right and wrong behavior, whether active in someone's mind, or passive in a demonstrable, extant set of books. (For the moment, I'll include the worst and most fundamentally flawed systems of right and wrong along with the best. Ultimately the two cannot be distinguished by mere consideration or logic alone. No principle of majority rule, conformity, or logic can alone answer questions of right and wrong.) In my expanded sense, every man has a law unto himself, i.e., a system of what he believes right and wrong behavior to be, including but not limited to how he should accord with all who promote and promulgate themselves as authorities. Some of these systems are wildly out of sync with the majority, while many of them are in high accord with each other.

In the US, we have a very detailed concept of law which is held by the vast majority and is highly consonant from person to person. But in 1861, we had two very charged and different conceptions of law among large segments, and we could not resolve the difference lawfully, but only by the force of war. Similarly, in 11th-century ecclesiastical law, the Roman Catholic Pope and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch each claimed to lead the One True Church, and thus came to the natural consequence where they each excommunicated certain members of the other's flock. These ecclesiastical laws remained on the books, and only at the Vatican II council, 9 centuries later, were the excommunications mutually reversed in the beginning of an attempt to heal the rift. So this basic conception of every man having a "law" and these "laws" being both similar and diverse is well-founded in history.

When a court rules as a group, the dissents are published as well. The dissents are not "law" for the purposes you describe, but they are MOST CERTAINLY the individual judges' perceptions of what the law SHOULD be, and WOULD be if only more of their "brethren" would agree. In this sense they are the individual "laws" of those judges. This also explains jury nullification.

Now all of this (and I respect our mutual difficulty in getting our hands around each other's concepts) is simply to lay the foundation for the real question: what really is "the law", not just the law as some man believes it to be? Either there is no such Platonic ideal, or there is such an ideal independent from every man's conception of it. Either all our perceptions of the law have no authority outside ourselves, or they are attempts to accurately or inaccurately reflect something independent of ourselves.

If there is NOT an idealized law, then we are all just using this fictitious concept of law to control each other and there is no reason to prefer legality or illegality. Law is just a means to get what you want, and neither logic nor right and wrong apply. But if there IS an idealized law, any person may be right or wrong in determining what that law is, and the only way to tell is to measure the conformity of that person's "law" to the idealized "law" insofar as it can be known.

Now, in our human undertaking to teach each other what the law IS, where our only tools are what we THINK the law is, judges have no special priority. What they have is training to render better decisions than the average person, and position within a widely accepted legal system to promulgate accepted decisions. But if you have placed your ultimate trust in the words of judges, you have no recourse when the judges treat you unlawfully in your opinion. You must either sear your conscience by pretending that what you believe to be unlawful must not have been; or you recognize that it's possible for courts to issue unlawful decisions.

Now, as to finding out what that idealized law actually is, recall that the ideal law is noncontradictory. If you believe that it's a fundamental principle of ideal law (e.g. "what courts say it is") that it can be contradictory, we have another layer to unpeel. But I think you really believe that ultimately there is a consistent law. If so, you would recognize the identity between this Platonic concept of "idealized law" and what many have called "the mind of God", i.e., what a supreme being would believe the system of right and wrong behavior to be. However, belief in God is not necessary to recognize the reality of an independent ideal.

So what is the law, really, Famspear? Is it truly an ideal independent of what everyone thinks, or is it truly a fiction? Or is the "law" of everyone's mind equally authoritative? The ideal law either exists or it doesn't; and if it exists, it either exists as an extant concept or as an extant reality (such as a set of books); and if it is a concept, it either exists in some man's mind, or in an ideal state which comprehends the best thoughts of all men's minds and which can be safely called "the mind of God".

Please feel free to pick. But please don't say the law is whatever certain people say under certain undisclosed conditions, because by any interpretation such "law" will be contradictory and will have no legal effect. I'm sorry to hear that legal training has gone that far. If you have sworn to defend a law which can be contradictory, well, here's your chance to defend such a wimpy law. Once we understand what the "law" truly is, we can determine how to resolve the apparent contradictions between various statutes and Judge Nancy's behavior. But please let me know, because I do not intend to respond to others on this thread, since they admit no authority beyond their own conceptions of law.

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten:

I apologize; that quote was indeed from SteveSy:

viewtopic.php?t=613&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=105

Yours, Famspear

[natty]

But please don't say the law is whatever certain people say under certain undisclosed conditions, because by any interpretation such "law" will be contradictory and will have no legal effect. I'm sorry to hear that legal training has gone that far. If you have sworn to defend a law which can be contradictory, well, here's your chance to defend such a wimpy law. Once we understand what the "law" truly is, we can determine how to resolve the apparent contradictions between various statutes and Judge Nancy's behavior. But please let me know, because I do not intend to respond to others on this thread, since they admit no authority beyond their own conceptions of law.

What is your authority beyond your own concept of law? Are you a Utopian dreamer? Why can't the law be amoral, that is, it is neither right nor wrong but a set of rules whereby a set of people agree to conduct themselves? Experience and reason would be the only judge of such law.

btw, the supreme law of the land-the Constitution-provides for the judiciary to decide all controversies under the Constitution. That ain't a "wimpy law" or flawed legal training. Do you have something better than a utopian pipe dream?

[Kimokeo]

"Third, when case law contradicts supreme law, it is clearly void. It is impossible to obey a contradictory law. "

It's not void. The decision is the true interpretation until ruled otherwise. If enforcement authority stands on the court's interpretation, then you are subject to possible enforcement if you act contrary to the court decision.

Your second sentence is not true. It is not impossible to obey when the law has been decided. There is a choice. To choose to obey or not obey the law as interpreted. The consequences of your action can be deemed courageous or foolish. There are times when courage is better saved for foolish moments.

[Disilloosianed]

Ultimately, "law" means a conceptual system of right and wrong behavior, whether active in someone's mind, or passive in a demonstrable, extant set of books.

Not really, at least not in a moralistic way, which is what your posting implies. For example, it is the law in the United States that cars drive on the right side of the road, while in the United Kingdom, cars drive on the left side of the road by law. Neither is "right" or "wrong." The law simply reflects a choice made to standardize traffic and avoid accidents. You could say that the desire behind the law might be "right", but the laws themselves? There's no way to make a value judgment.

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten: You write:

---"Third, when case law contradicts supreme law, it is clearly void. It is impossible to obey a contradictory law. If the same law with the same authority says you must do X and you must not do X, how can it be called law at all? It meets your fundamental test of having been promulgated by officials empowered to enunciate law (statutes or cases), but it does not meet the more fundamental test of noncontradiction. Since you have sworn to uphold the law, you will need to decide for yourself whether that law is noncontradictory or potentially contradictory."

The above verbiage is incorrect in the sense in which you intend it. Read the entire Constitution. The Constitution does not say that the determination of whether case law contradicts supreme law is made by Mr. Bulten, or by Famspear, or by the guy bagging my groceries at the store. The Constitution says that the judicial power shall be vested in one supreme Court and such other courts as the Congress shall by law establish. The determination, if it is to be made, of whether a court decision somehow violates "supreme law" is made UNDER THE U.S. LEGAL SYSTEM by -- guess who? -- the courts, not by Mr. Bulten or by other tax protesters.

Under our legal system, there is no such thing as a "fundamental test of noncontradiction" - at least not in the sense in which you apparently mean.

Since I have sworn to uphold the law, I do not need to decide for myself whether one law or another is noncontradictory or potentially contradictory except to the extent that I do so within the bounds of -- can you guess what's coming next? -- within the bounds of the law. To develop my understanding of what the law is, I study primarily the actual texts of the Constitution (AND the case law interpreting it); the statutes (AND the case law interpreting them); the regs (AND the case law interpreting them); the treaties (AND the case law interpreting them) --- are you starting to get the drift?

No, you are quite wrong. Case law is not "inferior" in the sense in which you intend. As a lawyer I am not free to ignore judicial precedent and substitute my own personal beliefs when drawing a conclusion about what the Constitution means, or what a statute means.

The case law interpreting each provision of the Constitution clings to and is enforceable as the AUTHORITATIVE legal statement of what that Constitution means, and that case law is SUPERIOR to mere statutes passed by Congress. I am bound by case law.

The case law interpreting a statute clings to and is enforceable as the AUTHORITATIVE legal statement of what that statute means, and that case law is superior to administrative regulations promulgated under the statute. I am bound by case law.

Under our legal system, the judicial power -- the power to apply the law and decide its meaning in actual cases or controversies is not vested in each citizen who can make his own "logical" conclusion about what the law means. The judicial power is vested in the courts. As a person who has taken an oath to uphold the law, I cannot pick and choose what part of the American legal system I happen to like in formulating my conclusions about what the law is. To the extent that the courts have decided what a particular provision of the Constitution or of a statute means, I am duty bound to adhere to recognize that the judicial precedent is the law. Yours, Famspear

[Cpt Banjo]

Third, when case law contradicts supreme law, it is clearly void. It is impossible to obey a contradictory law. If the same law with the same authority says you must do X and you must not do X, how can it be called law at all? It meets your fundamental test of having been promulgated by officials empowered to enunciate law (statutes or cases), but it does not meet the more fundamental test of noncontradiction. Since you have sworn to uphold the law, you will need to decide for yourself whether that law is noncontradictory or potentially contradictory.

And who, under our system of law, has been delegated the authority to make the determination of whether caselaw, statutory law, or any other kind of law contradicts the Constitution? The courts. If Bulten has a problem with that idea, he needs to take it up with the framers of the Constitution and the ghost of John Marshall.

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten: Regarding this verbiage:

---"If I came to you saying I'm an Article 3 Court with jurisdiction and my ruling of law is that Pete's case is dismissed, you'd be forced to rely on some authority more fundamental than "what the courts rule the law is". Since you don't know for absolute certainty that I'm not an Article 3 Court using a clever pseudonym, you might ask for documentary proof, like an oath of office, or a statute granting jurisdiction, or demonstration of appearance of Pete and Bob Metcalfe before me. But you'd have to, at minimum, abandon the position that "law" is as simple as what the courts rule the law is."

I hereby invoke what I and some of my classmates referred to in law school as the "Aw, come on now" rule.

Come on now. Neither I nor any other lawyer trained in this country has ANY TROUBLE AT ALL figuring out whether a given statement is a holding in a case properly before an Article III court or an Article I court or any other court. No trouble at all. The degree of uncertainty and complexity in law can be mind-boggling. But I and the other lawyers in this forum have been dealing with the uncertainties, the nuances, the shadings, the ontology, and the epistemology of jurisprudence for years. Do you have any idea of how many thousands of actual court cases, of statutes, etc., the typical law student has already studied by the time he or she graduates from law school (never mind the study that comes in real world practice)? Do you really think other people are going to take these kinds of statements seriously? Do you really suffer from the delusion that you could somehow understand the nature and complexity and uncertainty of law, based on your struggling, straining, idiosyncratic attempts to construct your own interpretation, to convince other people that the tax law is what you believe it is, rather than what the courts have ruled it is? You are wildly mis-stating the nature and extent of the uncertainties inherent in the study of American law. Yours, Famspear

[Imalawman]

Perhaps when the gods of Quatloos deem Famspear worthy, his title should be "Quatloosian Epistemologically Self-Aware Ontologist"?

[Prof]

Third, when case law contradicts supreme law, it is clearly void. It is impossible to obey a contradictory law. If the same law with the same authority says you must do X and you must not do X, how can it be called law at all? It meets your fundamental test of having been promulgated by officials empowered to enunciate law (statutes or cases), but it does not meet the more fundamental test of noncontradiction. Since you have sworn to uphold the law, you will need to decide for yourself whether that law is noncontradictory or potentially contradictory.

And who, under our system of law, has been delegated the authority to make the determination of whether caselaw, statutory law, or any other kind of law contradicts the Constitution? The courts. If Bulten has a problem with that idea, he needs to take it up with the framers of the Constitution and the ghost of John Marshall.

Bulten is an anarchist; each man is a law unto himself and the state should not be allowed to exist.

He quote above does lead to a discussion of civil disobedience and in some cases outright rebellion.

Civil disobedience, as discussed by and illustrated by Ghandi, Martin Luther King, etc., is best illustrated by the conduct of Rosa Parks. When confronted with an obviously evil law -- which in and of itself had been created by a representative assembly and was not in violation of the Constitution, simply, directly, and without any attempt to interpret the law, stood up, disobeyed, and went to jail.

The law, regulating public transport, decreed segregation of the races. Racially segregated transport had been decreed constitutional by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Ms. Parks did not decide that there was "no such law" or that the "law did not apply to her, on Thursdays, between 11-12 pm," or that the Law and court decisions contradicted "supreme law." She simply confronted the bad law, disobeyed it knowing the consequences, and led a mini revolution which changed the law.

Note the conduct and the result. You can also read about Ghandi and his approach to British rule.

Rebellion may also be necessary. Sometimes, "good men and women" must fight and die to overthrow tyranny. Sometimes they succeed. The American Revolution is an illustration. Sometimes the regime which replaces the old one is even worse, by objective, historical evidence. See the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution. Sometimes, the revolutionaries fail, as with the US Civil War.

But neither civil disobedience or bloody revolution suits folks like Bulten. He's not even willing to work within the system for change. He just wants to self-decide what the law is -- and then do what he wants. He is focused on tax laws. He might as easily be focused on sex with sheep. Rather than advocate freedom for men and sheep, he merely wants to point out that the legislature, in prohibiting sex with sheep, did not actually do so because the code in which the statute is incorporated is not positive law or that the supreme law leaves him the Sheep-God, free to act as he sees fit, and besides, sex with sheep is not defined because the constitution cannot allow regulation of all types of sex with sheep, and he has determined that whatever it is he likes to do is not sex, because unlike the legislature and the courts, he knows what is sex and what is not. Or, the law does not apply to him because the sheep are classified by some as goats. Or, the sheep are not chattels of the government and are not located on a government pasture; therefore, the government has no interest in the sheep.

Finally, there is always the "higher calling:" Having sex with sheep is set out as a thing that is permissible in my [Holy Book] and because it is G**'s will, I shall do as H*/S**/I* or the Proph** calls me to do. OTHERWISE: "If you don't like it, I'll blow myself up and take you with me."

Bulten is an anarchist -- or self-centered to an extreme. What he is not is smart. Otherwise, he be out earning an honest living with more free time, more money, and fewer risks of criminal and civil process.

[Famspear]

Dear Mr. Bulten: Let's look at this verbiage:

---"But please don't say the law is whatever certain people say under certain undisclosed conditions, because by any interpretation such "law" will be contradictory and will have no legal effect. I'm sorry to hear that legal training has gone that far. If you have sworn to defend a law which can be contradictory, well, here's your chance to defend such a wimpy law"

Sorry, but what I am saying is that the law is whatever certain people say under certain DISCLOSED positions. The law is what the courts say the law is. The law is what the judge rules the law is. Your statement that such a law will "have no legal effect" is without legal merit.

I understand that you feel strongly the way you do, and that you have a tangible and admirable sense of that the law should be logical, and non-contradictory, and fair -- but your reasoning is not proper legal analysis, and your statement is not correct. You continue to strain to try to show that law should be logical (or at least non-contradictory). If you are looking for a body of knowledge that contains the kinds of contradictions you apparently cannot tolerate, the study of law is not the place for you. Yours, Famspear

[Famspear]

Footnote: Sorry, what I meant to say was: "If you are looking for a body of knowledge that does NOT contain the kinds of contradictions you apparently cannot tolerate, the study of law is not the place for you." Law is not the place for you if you can't handle the contradictions. As one of my law professors said (a tax law professor, no less!), "the mark of intellect is the ability to hold two mutually contradictory concepts in one's mind simultaneously" --yours, Famspear

[Imalawman]

Footnote: Sorry, what I meant to say was: "If you are looking for a body of knowledge that does NOT contain the kinds of contradictions you apparently cannot tolerate, the study of law is not the place for you." Law is not the place for you if you can't handle the contradictions. As one of my law professors said (a tax law professor, no less!), "the mark of intellect is the ability to hold two mutually contradictory concepts in one's mind simultaneously" --yours, Famspear

Didn't Orwell write that? Seems like it was part of the book "1984". (or maybe something out of doublespeak) It just sounds familiar.

[Famspear]

Orwell? Could very well be. I just remember this tax professor saying something like that in class, and it stuck with me. Maybe he got it from Orwell. The professor had a bachelor's degree in literature or something like that (from Harvard) and had been on Harvard Law Review. Yeah, those people were probably reading Orwell. At my school out here in the sticks, we were reading only the funny papers. Wait a minute, I did read Animal Farm (oh, but that was in high school).

Uh, I'm tired. Can I go home now? --Famspear

[Disilloosianed]

Well, there's the one from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

But I think Orwell said something similar.

[Famspear]

PS - regarding these posts by LPC above:

---"The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact and nothing more pretentious are what I mean by the law.” The Paths of the Law (1897) [as quoted by LPC]

---"So, when a statute is clear and unambiguous, or a regulation is within the scope of a statute, we expect that the courts will enforce the statute or regulation as written. That "prophecy," which embraces both the legislative statute and the judicial function, is what we call "law." -- [from LPC]

---"This is actually a corollary of a slightly different idea, which is that “the only definition of law for a lawyer’s purposes is something which the Court will enforce.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, 7/3/1874 [as quoted by LPC]

These are great. I like LPC's formulations and his quotations from Holmes much better than my "the law is what the courts say the law is" - but I keep using my own verbiage, I guess 'cause I'm too old to change. --Yours, Famspear