The Letter of the Law in ‘The Merchant of Venice’

Summary

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.

(W. H. Auden, ‘Law Like Love’)

In his delightful satire of post-Austinian legal philosophy, the modern poet mocks the entire notion of authoritarian Law, with its doctrines of judicial certainty and binding precedent (‘as I've told you before’). For humanists like Auden, the essence of Justice is a mystery, supremely indefinable like the laws which govern the heart. The legal problems dramatised by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, although historically different in point of judicial practice, are qualitatively similar to those explored in ‘Law Like Love’: how, given a universal statement of the law, sanctioned by the weight of statutory authority (‘No power in Venice / Can alter a decree established‘), can the judge arrive at essential Justice in all individual and particular cases? In general terms, Tudor and Jacobean authorities found the ideal solution in Aristotelian epikeia, a concept they customarily rendered as ‘Equity’ and rather loosely associated with Christian conscience, judicial discretion, and the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery.