That's a great quote from the historian: "Laws are rules with a telescope, far-seeing and aiming high; regulations are rules with a microscope, myopic and focused on detail." A good law aims high and connects with a "thick" polity. Breaking these good laws hurts us all because breaking them thins the polity. I think this sense of the damage to a community was better understood by many Native American tribes, which would hold a hearing to find out how the community and its customs had contributed to someone breaking a law. Participants at such hearings may have understood Chesterton's adage better than we: "When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.” You get regulations, and you focus on detail. You lose some freedom.
I like how Professor James Stoner helps us bureaucratically oriented readers with the common-law mindset of Edward Coke: ". . . Coke does not see law as so mechanical or bureaucratic a force as do we. The prudence of the judge is not the same as the rule-mindedness of the bureaucrat; it is at once freer and more responsible, for it is the judgment of a living mind, not the mandate of an impersonal rule-book" (Stoner, Common Law and Liberal Theory, 29). Stoner hastens to add that this judicial "living mind" is awash in the "artificial reason" of the English common law.
Stoner explores what he calls a "common law way of thinking about politics." You might like his reference to Aristotle as he connects politics with what he would like to see of a polity's common-law (thick) mindset: "The common law approach to politics involves the citizen or legislator conceiving his task as judge or advocate within a legal frame . . . The common law proceeds by reason, but by reason that collects and judges particulars--by a sort of Aristotelian practical reason--rather than by reason in the modern, Enlightenment, analytical sense--the reason that breaks apart and reassembles. It stresses continuity rather than novelty, though it demands some reason greater than custom alone, for by common law, unreasonable customs have no legal force" (177).
"Life became less a mystery to respect than a problem to regulate." Yes. Regulation involves a kind of breaking apart and reassembling. Mystery, like thickness, can be the result of continuity.
That's a great quote from the historian: "Laws are rules with a telescope, far-seeing and aiming high; regulations are rules with a microscope, myopic and focused on detail." A good law aims high and connects with a "thick" polity. Breaking these good laws hurts us all because breaking them thins the polity. I think this sense of the damage to a community was better understood by many Native American tribes, which would hold a hearing to find out how the community and its customs had contributed to someone breaking a law. Participants at such hearings may have understood Chesterton's adage better than we: "When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.” You get regulations, and you focus on detail. You lose some freedom.
I like how Professor James Stoner helps us bureaucratically oriented readers with the common-law mindset of Edward Coke: ". . . Coke does not see law as so mechanical or bureaucratic a force as do we. The prudence of the judge is not the same as the rule-mindedness of the bureaucrat; it is at once freer and more responsible, for it is the judgment of a living mind, not the mandate of an impersonal rule-book" (Stoner, Common Law and Liberal Theory, 29). Stoner hastens to add that this judicial "living mind" is awash in the "artificial reason" of the English common law.
Stoner explores what he calls a "common law way of thinking about politics." You might like his reference to Aristotle as he connects politics with what he would like to see of a polity's common-law (thick) mindset: "The common law approach to politics involves the citizen or legislator conceiving his task as judge or advocate within a legal frame . . . The common law proceeds by reason, but by reason that collects and judges particulars--by a sort of Aristotelian practical reason--rather than by reason in the modern, Enlightenment, analytical sense--the reason that breaks apart and reassembles. It stresses continuity rather than novelty, though it demands some reason greater than custom alone, for by common law, unreasonable customs have no legal force" (177).
"Life became less a mystery to respect than a problem to regulate." Yes. Regulation involves a kind of breaking apart and reassembling. Mystery, like thickness, can be the result of continuity.
Thanks for these thoughts. I'll be spending more time with this. !