2 - Language and Legal Constitutions: The Problem of Change and Who Governs

Summary

Touching construction of a pact,

A paper pact, with points abstruse

As theologic ones – profuse

In matter for an honest doubt;

And which, in end, a stubborn knot

Some cut but with the sword.

Herman Melville, Clarel

Language and law share a power and a paradox. By providing the rules that govern speech and action, by defining values, by specifying a sense of what is right and wrong, just and unjust, they make possible communication and community – those systems of ordered liberty and rule-governed freedom that distinguish us as the social animal who speaks. Rules of grammar and the laws of the state are undeniably repressive; they structure or seek to structure our words or actions. We ignore or violate them at the risk of being misunderstood, shamed, punished, or exiled. But in a paradox resembling the Christian belief that freedom is found in obedience to the Word, obedience to grammar and law can be considered liberating. Grammar frees us from the confusion of babble, and law frees us from social chaos. “Strange as it may seem,” Whitman declares, “we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law” (WLA, 1073). Through language and law, we gain citizenship in a city of words, a moralized realm of linguistic positives (e.g., justice, freedom) built upon a foundation of negatives (e.g., “Thou shalt not …”). The cost is exile from the world as given – the state of nature or chaos - and the threat that the structures of law and language may become too repressive, demanding a “No” – or, better yet, an “ain't” – in thunder.