Don's Review: Law, Politics, Science, Philosophy

April 4, 2010

                Charlie finished off the last three notes of “Consider Yourself” from the musical “Oliver” with a flourish, hanging on note one, stretching and twisting note two, and punctuating note three like Sinatra in “That’s Life.” Charlie is 9.

                “Yay!” his dad yelled and clapped from the liviing room. “Bravo!” Charlie came out and danced like Carol Burnett as Mrs. Hannigan in the movie “Annie.” The hip thrustiing style his 9-year-old performed with always brought laughter between father and son. They always made sure Mom was in the other room. They high-fived. “That’s my man. Can I have my hug?” The 9-year-old let his dad hug, but from a full foot away—he was a young man now!

                “Uncle Danny would love it if he saw your ‘Mrs. Hannigan’ dance! Do it for your director next rehearsal.” No answer. Then, “Can we go to the park?” “Just a minute.”

                At the park, Charlie sprang free, like a gazelle on the savannah. He was 50 yards away in four seconds. Some kids played a no-rules basketball game at a lone hoop.

                Charlie tried to join in. He was rebuffed. The three kids had “white skin,” to use Charlie’s terminology. He had “brown skin.” He tried again, grabbing the ball and making a quick before-they-could-block-it shot attempt. His dad, who had just sat down on a bench jumped up as the third kid, the tallest, moved to push Charlie.

                “What’s going on here?” the dad asked.

                “He’s calling us names.”

                “He just wants to play basketball with you.”

                “Nah.” The tall boy walked away. The other two followed.

                “Charlie. You’ve got to say ‘Can I play with you?’ very nicely first. Right? Then, if they say no, you say it again, ‘Can I play with you, please? Very nicely.”

                Charlie nodded.

                “What did I say, Charlie? Tell me.”

                “I say—(long pause)—I say—(long pause) ‘Can I pay ‘nice—(pause, stutter)—t-two times.”

                “Right. THEN you can call them ‘jerks’ or ‘pigs,’ OK? Not until you’ve tried your best to be nice. Remember Cub scouts always, what?...”

                “Try their best.”

                “That’s my man. I’m going to get you and me a ball so you and me can shoot baskets, OK?” The middle-aged man shook his head. To think that the previous week, his son had played for two and a half hours at a McDonald’s jungle gym with no complaints from kids or adults and no controversies. He thought, sarcastically, “Perhaps that crowd was a bit more diverse than these lily-white, off-the-boat Irish pigs? Or less delicate than the Jewish Gaza-baby-killers that lived in the other part of Charlie’s neighborhood with their ‘the-next-Einstein’ kids.

                Charlie already was 50 yards away, at the big slide, going up the wrong way. His dad estimated that it would be less than five minutes before a parent or a kid came to him with a complaint.

                He checked his dad’s old gold watch on his white wrist.

March 27, 2010

I cannot find you among the clouds

Nor him, sitting at your right side

I felt it this morning though, with music’s help

I shed my tears like a baby, longing for both of you

Though I never knew you, except as icons

Who fought between each other for space and dignity

You did what you thought was best

But ripped my life apart

It was a shock when I loved my first woman

I didn’t think that happened in real life

And not to an Elephant Man like me

I didn’t have time to grieve the 20 years lost time

Nor the sudden realization that I’d never know you

Both

I never knew you. Your anger and fears kept me out

I’ve lost only icons whose shells smiled at me

As though I was their prized show dog

I learned that men stay on red alert until the woman is in heat

Then, behind closed doors, the man and woman meet

The child learns none of this

Until his 30s

And the therapist, pressed by time and money, withholds his assimilation time and his grieving time

He will die an uninitiated man—not really a man. Not accepted by his peers.

And crying like the baby he really still is, at age 55—or more.

March 6, 2010

Edwin saw a fire in the forest. He screamed, “Mommy…Daddy…There’s a fire!”

                Mama Elephant, who was closest said, “Well, stomp it out with your feet, Eddie!”

                “Oo…oo…ouch!” Edwin cried as he put out the fire.

                “Mommy, Daddy. Where did this fire come from?” he said, soothing his stinging feet in a mud puddle.

                “Those campers over there,” Dada Elephant said, pointing his trunk to some motorized campers by the hill.

                “They will destroy our home!” Edwin said. “Or kill us!”

                “You may be right,” his Mama said, wrapping her trunk around him.

                “You are correct, Eddie,” his Dada said. “We have to stop this before it’s too late.”

                “How?” asked Edwin.

                “I say we tip over their motor-homes,” his dada said.

                “No, father,” his mama said, “We must show them Edwin’s burned feet. They will move then.”

                “No!” his dada screeched. “They have no feelings for us. They care about only their own comfort.”

                “I’m sorry, Dada. I’m with Mama. I want them to see what they did to me. I hurt sooo bad.”

                “Son, this will be a hard lesson. Let’s show them your feet,” his father said reluctantly.

                The family quietly limped the 200 yards out of the trees and stopped at the first camper.

                The female camper just then turned and screamed, “Dick. The goddam elephants are going to crush me!”

                Dick, who had been dozing in front of the camper’s TV set while his wife threw logs on their campfire, grabbed his rifle from the wall and handgun from the coffee table and ran outside.

                Blam! He used the rifle to hit Dada in the eye. Dada silently dropped dead.

                Mama screeched and pushed Eddie aside.

                Dick shot he between the eyes. Blinded, she ran towards her baby, but hit the camper instead. It teetered over.

                “Dick! Our beds! Our food!”

                Dick killed Mama with one more bullet to her earhole.

                Edwin stood shaking, frozen in fear and shock. He peed on the ground.

                “Dick! Now!” The wife pleaded.

                Dick took his handgun, walked toward Edwin, who could not move. Dick shot him in the temple. He dropped dead.

                “Thank God I saw them in time,” Lynne said.

                “Let’s say a prayer of thanks, Lynne, that the good Lord was watching over us tonight when those motherfuckers tried to disturb our—bought and paid-for in the good ol’ US of A—camp here.”

                “Amen,” she said.

Illustrations by 'There is Strangeness in the Universe' http://strangenessinuniverse.blogspot.com by Philip M. Chen
eight east lawn strategic consulting, llc

Feb. 27, 2010

No one is going to care when I die/Beyond three days of my funeral

My death is likely to be unknown to me/I'll die in my sleep or/On a hospital bed knowing only that I'm sick or/While unconscious from medications

If it is known to me, I'll feel extreme pain for two hours to two years, or/I'll be able to prepare myself and friends/and I will be drugged and/will pass on without knowing

No one will remember me past one year. If they do, it will be for five to 20 minutes tops/as they gaze at my photo or/gravestone

I am but one of billions and billions of self-aware hominids and homo sapiens who/have lived or will live/My life has no more import than the middle brick in the Empire State Building

When I pass on, my body will disappear via fire or rot exactly like that brick in that skyscraper

I can only hope to be loved by family or friends/for a few years at most/Then forgotten as they get bored or I get lost among their new acquaintances

Dec. 4, 2009

Joan Ullman is a New York City journalist and courts reporter.

So you get a little older, you wake up one morning, your friends are sick or dying off, your children are turning fifty – fifty! –  then last summer, there I was, faced with my first genuine life-threatening situation.  But thanks to the thriller I was glued to, I remained almost oblivious, right up to undergoing dire –sounding surgery to remove “a bleed on my brain.”

                I’d bought the book –the second in the prematurely deceased Swedish author, Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” (Vintage Books, New York, $70 for all three) after part three’s U.S. publication last summer.  A bad fall I took shortly before had left me with a left-side weakness that drastically limited my mobility. I’d had bad falls before and nothing that terrible had happened: a broken finger; a lip I’d bitten so deeply it needed to be stitched; a broken nose.  This time, the sudden onset of my disquieting symptoms – not to mention fleeting intimations of being about to drop dead -  sent me on a two-week-long diagnostic quest. My medical odyssey was made more cumbersome by the walker I struggled to push, and by Larsson’s 503-page book I insisted on lugging along. 

                I bought Book One after its U.S. publication the previous fall, on the word of my trusted cut-rate bookseller outside Zabar’s on Manhattan’s West Side.  It wasn’t Larsson’s writing that instantly drew me in.  Like his millions of fans, I was compelled by his complex and convoluted plots, his complicated and believable characters, and perhaps something more: an intensity that makes you wonder in hindsight if he had intuited his impending death.

A crusading journalist against right wing and racist organizations, and a self professed feminist, - much like his fictional financial/journalist counterpart  who battles corruption in politics, social services and the law - Larsson submitted all three books in his trilogy for publication in 2004. He died a few months later at age-50 of a heart attack before seeing them published or tasting fame.

I began Book Two while undergoing a series of exams and MRI’s. They ruled out stroke, Parkinson’s, MS and other dire-sounding conditions, but left me still potentially facing life as a wheelchair-bound shut-in.  I was seated in a hospital hallway, my book on my lap, after yet another MRI, this one of my brain, when the MRI technician I’d just left raced into the hallway.  “Stay seated. Do not go home!” he said.

                I looked up with some irritation at being interrupted. “I went home after my other MRI’s.”

                “You have a bleed on your brain.”

                “A bleed…” The words sounded awful, even if I didn’t fully register their import.

                “We’re admitting you to the emergency room.”

A handsome, black-haired doctor, clad in a summery tan suit who strode down a corridor, was introduced to me as my neurosurgeon-to-be. It was he who explained that pressure from my belatedly discovered `bleed’ above the lower right side of my brain was the cause of my up until now baffling symptoms.

The doctor explained that if bleeds like mine don’t spontaneously reabsorb, the only solution is to operate.

                “Operate?”

                “I drill a small burr hole”, my doctor said. Flashing a blinding smile, he added. “It won’t hurt at all.  You’ll be fine.” 

                “You’re going to drill into my head?”

Images of the preliminaries, which flooded my potentially blood-drenched brain, left me more frightened than the thought of the actual surgery. “Will I be bald?”

                “You won’t see anything.  I’ll make a tiny hole under your bangs.  No one will notice.”     

I attribute it largely to the gripping hold on me of Larsson’s second book – just like that of the first - that I never felt another rush of panic. Instead, quite uncharacteristically, I felt totally reassured by my doctor’s confident and authoritative manner.  I didn’t even succumb to terror hours later, when, after my daughter joined me in the E.R., she wrested from my doctor the technical diagnosis for my condition – a `subdural hematoma.’  I just went on reading, spellbound - one half of a tightly bonded pair: the death-pursued writer and his (hopefully) death-dodging reader. Even when one medical personnel after another drew ominous analogies to the `epidural hematoma’ from which the actress, Natasha Richardson, had died after a fall last winter - right in this very hospital - I did not grow unduly alarmed. Of course, I was quickly informed, her condition had been far more dire; her hematoma was situated  above the brain’s dura matter, whereas mine,situated below it, had more time and space in which to expand. Richardson would have needed immediate diagnosis and surgery to survive.  

Nearly twenty-six hours later – just before 6-PM - I was finally wheeled into the operating room.  Half-way through my book, I reluctantly left it for safe-keeping with my daughter. Its plot had reached a peak of complexity.  The slim, tattooed computer/hacker female sleuth has been framed for murder.  While she is both hunted and on the hunt for her framers, three parallel investigations into the murders for which she’s a suspect are under way.

 On the operating table, sedated but aware, I partook in the witty banter between my surgeon, his assistant and anesthesiologist,  even as I deliberately stayed focused on not losing track of the twists and turns of the story to date.  My surgeon later attributed my hyper-alert condition to Profopol, seemingly the anesthesia des jour. I was high- totally high - my medical team hastened to inform me, on the very drug Michael Jackson had allegedly overdosed on and died. I knew better. I felt sure my book had been key to sustaining me through my surgery.

During my hospital recovery, I continued to read obsessively. Back home, as I continued to recuperate, and my reading neared its end, I became aware I’d been lucky. I never developed seizures – a dread, but not uncommon, side effect of brain surgery. At my checkup one month later my surgeon told me I’d been luckier still.  My bleed had completely “resolved”.  Unlike many hematoma- afflicted patients, I’d be spared months, even years, of future evaluations by CT Scan or MRI.

My relief at hearing of my clean bill of health was undercut by another emotion. For the first time in my ordeal, I felt something like real fear.  Unlike Book One, Larsson’s Book Two had ended in a true cliff-hanger. Badly wounded in a shoot-out with several of the bad guys, the feisty heroine lies near death.  While supporters have proof of her innocence, others who want her dead are still alive. And the state, which has victimized her throughout her life, still wants to try her for murder.

                It had taken just under a year after Book One’s publication for the English translation of Book Two to reach the U.S.  I could see from Book Two’s jacket that Book Three was already available in Europe.  But in the States, I faced another near year-long wait.  Meanwhile, my doctor had warned that like other recovered hematoma patients, I myself still faced a slight chance of my bleed recurring.

                And that’s when I panicked.  What if I didn’t survive for long enough to read Book Three and find out what happened? 

                Despite its risks, I’d never had so acute a fear before or after my previous voluntary knee replacement surgery. Actually, I hadn’t had such a strong an intuition of my own mortality since the birth of my first child. As I’d peered down at the tiny, ancient-looking face of my newborn son, I felt awed and momentarily grief-struck on realizing that this infant being would one day – hopefully years from now – outlive me.

                Nor had it ever occurred to me so starkly that I might not live to find out how a story would end in a book I loved.  I’d waited patiently year after year on my birthday for each new Oz book my parents were sure to bestow on me.  Later, I couldn’t entirely trust in the same continuity. Or perhaps I grew more impatient. Long before my Larsson experience, if I couldn’t bear the suspense before, or soon after starting a really gripping mystery, I’d cheat.  I’d steal a peek at the end.

                 Thanks to Amazon, I found a way out of my dilemma. I ordered Book Three from Amazon-UK.  I didn’t believe this would actually work, but just as promised, Larsson’s last work in his trilogy arrived on schedule, the first week of October.  A scant three months after my surgery and 599 pages later, when, after finding nearly all its loose ends neatly tied up, I reached my book’s  end. I’d made it! I was still alive and hematoma free, I felt relieved, of course.

                Only I still couldn’t fully celebrate my survival.  I emerged from  Book Three feeling almost as frustrated as I had after Book Two.  Larsson had seemingly not meant his three book series to end where they did; it’s said that a fourth, and perhaps part of a fifth, of ten contemplated novels may still reside on the deceased author’s laptop. That computer is held by his long time companion, who worked with him on his novels, but who, for security reasons (specifically Swedish laws which publicize the residences of married couples) Larsson never wed.  Nor, having failed to write a will, is his companion free to edit and publish these other works.  Swedish law dictates that Larsson’s literary rights belong to his father and brother. And they are said to be opposed to any future publication of the writer’s incomplete works.

                If the author himself was silenced prematurely by death, the law has so far seen to it that I and his millions of other fans will be left doubly deprived. Any remaining works he might have left or planned will undergo their own demise  - doomed to remain stillborn on Larsson’s hidden-away computer. Readers like me will kept in the dark forever about what might have come next.  But as I found out during my own recent potential brush with death, reading to find out what happens next – one of many reasons why I’ve always traveled about with my head in a book  - is also one of the best ways to ward off death. To be prevented from finding out what happens next to Larsson’s richly drawn characters is itself to suffer a kind of mini-death when the answer lies so tantalizingly just beyond reach. His untold stories have transformed into a 21^st Century fairy tale: like Larsson’s compelling computer/ hack heroine who lay buried alive near the end of Book Two, his words are destined to remain locked inside a computer until  some new electronic device can see inside that laptop and pry them loose.

                I’ve been appalled by the ongoing feud between Larsson’s girlfriend and family for the toll it threatens to take on reading addicts like me.  But it’s left me determined to remain alive long enough to learn just what Larsson left on his laptop. 

Aug. 9, 2009. Harold (Harry) Reynolds is an attorney in Scarsdale, N.Y.

Three a.m. My phone rings. A woman’s voice.

-Harry?

-Yes.

-Harry Reynolds?

-Yes, who is calling?

-It’s me, Betty, Betty Flaherty. Y’remember me, Harry? Fordham University ‘49?

(Jesus, do I remember her. Eyes of blue, breasts of gold, my God, she must be old.)

-Yes, I do remember you, Betty.

-I hope I’m not disturbin’ you, Harry. (She’s drunk.)

(Oh, once you did Betty Blue, once you did, God bless you, Betty Blue.)

-No, you’re not disturbing me at all, Betty. I was just passing the phone and thought I’d pick it up. How have you been?

-You wouldn’t believe the things they are telling us now, she whispers with a hint of urgency.

(I see her somewhere out there in the United States, bent drunk in the dark over a telephone, paranoid.)

-What are they telling you, Betty?

-They say the Vatican is abolishing limbo. The baby souls go straight to heaven, Harry.

-What’s wrong with that, Betty? I often wondered what they did in limbo. You wouldn’t deprive the kids of that would you, Betty? If you had had a baby and it had died before baptism, you wouldn’t want the baby to go to limbo, would you?

[Silence. A drunk thinking.]

-But what about all the prayers I said through the years, Harry, what becomes of them? Jesus, all those rosaries, those Hail Marys, those skipped meals, I didn’t eat candy in Lent for four years, all for those kids in limbo! What about that time out of my life, Harry?

(I see a long, long night, maybe more than one. I act quickly.)

-That time, Betty, that time by Canon Law, the law of the Church that speaks for God on earth, that time is reassigned to some other equally worthy cause. It’s a kind of net, a catch net, like welfare.

-Are you sure?, asks Betty.

-I’m a lawyer Betty. And I know these things. All Canon Laws have catch nets to prevent the dissipation of the prayers of the faithful.

-Jesus, you’re still the bright one, Harry.

-Thanks Betty, I have to put the phone down now. My arm is turning blue.

-Goodbye, Harry.

-Goodbye, Betty. Incidentally, where are you? I haven’t seen you for nearly 60 years. You were from Chicago.

-I’m in New York on my cell phone , Harry.

-Where’s the cell phone, Betty?

-With me, Harry. I'm in your driveway.

Aug. 20, 2009. Harold (Harry) Reynolds is an attorney in Scarsdale, N.Y.

He woke on Sunday morning

By night he was in a bag

What you have not seen you cannot feel

My boy Billie died in Baghdad.

Press your ear to the ground

Did Billie yell my name?

Did he call out for his mother

Did he think he was in a game?

Did he swear you all into Hell,

As you took his body from where he fell?

Lock the door,

Paint the windows black,

I'm going to the attic

And I won't be back

I'll go through all the photos

You'll find them at my feet

Lying next to Billie

In that desert heat.

Sometime in the 1950s

Margaret Ullrich helped manage a farm with her husband just outside of Worthington, Minn.

They say to me, "All men must die."

They say, "The best of friends must part."

They say, "Be brave. He’s out of pain."

But, oh, my heart! My aching heart!

They tell me we shall meet again

They say it’s better not to cry

But, oh the agony it is

To know my loved one had to die!

I know that peace will come to me

That time will reconcile in part,

The pain that strikes like knife of steel

But, oh, my heart! My aching heart!

Sept. 24, 2006

My Dad had a stroke on Sept. 4, early in the morning. The nurses found him unresponsive. They took him to the hospital.

That’s where I found him Sept. 8, gasping like a fish out of water as the pneumonia insidiously, gradually shut down his lungs. He couldn’t move his whole right side of his body. Could only move his left eye brow and eye and the left corner of his mouth a bit. And his left toe a bit. And his left thumb.

There he lay from Sept 4 to Sept. 14, early in the morning, when death finally showed some mercy and took him. During the interim, the sparkle 　was in his eye as he watched his four children talk to him, make weak jokes, and sing old-time songs to him from the left side of his bed.

None of us knew whether he knew he was going to die in a matter of days: via another stroke, heart attack, cancer or 　pneumonia. I took his head in my arms one day and said: "Dad. Just so you know for sure. You had a MAJOR stroke on the left side of your brain recently. That’s why you can’t move your right side and that’s why you are in this hospital. I just wanted you 　to know. And to know that you are very , very sick."

He seemed to calm 　down then, although some of the twinkle left his left eye. He still tried with all his might to interact with us, even raising his left arm at the elbow—proudly. None of us could applaud him. I don’t know if my brothers or sister told him he had only 　a few days to go.

I took walks in the sun, which in all its power rejuvenated me somewhat.

Then Dad qualified for hospice care within that same hospital room. That meant that they could give him morphine as a "comfort measure." This took him away from us. He fell asleep almost continuously, but the repeated horrid drags of air stopped.

Death took him that Thurs night early in the morning. None of us was there. We got there half an hour afterwards.

I kissed his forehead. It was still warm.

Death took him. I can’t talk to him any 　more. He can’t talk to me. He was cremated. He is dust.

August 1972

You shake me

You rock me to sleep at night

And yet I feel

You’ll never be right

Ahhhhh, what I wouldn’t give for nice

To see you again as sugar and spice

But never again will you hold your head straight

This world has got you, and you know it’s too late

Shake it to me

Back to little girl laughs

And little girl faces

Shake it to me

You’re dying

You’re running lost races

Spread your feet

Stand tall as a mountain

Lean against no one

Yet

You’re a dimestore fountain

But it’s a well running dry

It’s a freckle, neath a little girl’s eye

Living and loving, kissing and hugging

No one

You’re dying

You’re melting to none

You know too much

You’re a little lost sun.

Sometime in the 1970s

Josephine Wallace (1896-1982) managed a farm in Minnesota with her husband, Francis Wallace.

I listen to the train whistling

To break my lonesomeness

I hear it, yet I don’t

I am thoughtless, not

Hearing but hearing

In my solitude

I wait for some interruption of the silence

I rest. I think

Knowing that there is nothing to anticipate

Lonely, alone, in my restful years.

Knowing there is nothing

That waits for me. I can accomplish only what I wish. Only the usual routine things,

Do I care? Not really.

Why should I worry about this situation.

I have worried too much through the years gone by

Too much for any person

So I rest, I think only of what I wish to think

To stay calm, to relax, to enjoy only what I care to think of.

To do only the activity I enjoy, the choice is mine

Thinking, enjoying, waiting, not with excitement,

Only with calmness

That is the reason for living, the reason for a future.

Knowing that destiny will not change anything more.

The future, the destiny is mine

I have conquered, I have lived a life of purpose,

Of success in my own way

That way was destined for me.

And that is the past

Now I live a way of serenity,

A way of awareness, not to be known, ever before.

Nothing to be conquered except myself in my own way

My thinking is my life

It is my future

It is my reward for my past that I have lived

Never more shall I have the regrets of the every day life of living of my past.

Nevermore shall I sit and wish and also regret of the past days.

Now is my calmness

My era of enjoyment of my own thoughts

I now have my own life to live,

My own future coming every day

As a calm reward for trying to

Live in the past in a truly righteous fashion.

I am content.

Oct. 20, 2009

Bibliographic Information Brill Academic Publishers, 2008, Pages : 240, $23.00, ISBN 9789004171480;

Globallawbooks.org, http://www.globallawbooks.org/reviews/detail.asp?id=588 20 European Journal of International Law (2009:3)

Reviewed by Veijo Heiskanen, Geneva 

The conventional wisdom is that the commercial man is more interested in things material than philosophical reflection. Professor Emmanuel Gaillard – a prominent commercial arbitration practitioner and professor of law – in his Hague Academy lectures of 2007 sets out to prove that the conventional wisdom is not entirely accurate. In the best French tradition of private international law scholarship, Professor Gaillard undertakes an intellectual tour de force which demonstrates that the law of international arbitration cannot properly be understood without reflection on its philosophical underpinnings, and vice versa, that different philosophical conceptions of the law of international arbitration are not without practical implications.[1]

This is no small feat, and as Professor Lalive noted in his own review, while the epithet “philosophiques” in the title may scare more pragmatically-oriented readers away, Professor Gaillard’s lectures, which have now been published in a handy pocket book format, are indeed “indispensable” for a proper understanding of contemporary international arbitration.[2]

Professor Gaillard starts his investigation with an interesting thesis: the law of arbitration, even more so than private international law, lends itself to philosophical reflection. This is because the “essentially philosophical” notions of free will and liberty lie at the very core of the discipline. At the same time, the exercise of these rights – the freedom of the parties to create a private tribunal to resolve their differences, to agree on a procedure that is most appropriate in the circumstances and to choose the applicable law, and the corresponding liberty of the arbitrators to rule on their own competence, to regulate the arbitral process and, in the absence of choice of law by the parties, to designate the applicable law – also raise questions of legitimacy. Even more fundamentally, they also raise questions of the source of the arbitrators’ authority and the legal nature (juridicité) of the resulting decision. Last but not least, they raise the question of the “sources” of the law of international arbitration – the ultimate criterion of academic relevance, in the view of many, of any legal theory. However, while the law of international arbitration may indeed provide a fertile ground for philosophical reflection, Professor Gaillard notes that intellectual exchanges between philosophers of law and specialists of the law of arbitration have remained relatively limited.

With few exceptions – again, these being found mainly in France or at least in the francophone world[3] – arbitration scholars have focused on expounding on positive law rather than the philosophy of law. Whatever encounters there have been, these occurred mainly in the context of the grand lex mercatoria debate in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, silence has prevailed, with the exception of another interesting debate, conducted mainly in the 1980s, about the “delocalization” of international arbitration (which Professor Gaillard curiously hardly mentions, although it does appear to underlie the second one of his three representations of the law of arbitration).

Professor Gaillard’s principal thesis can be summarized briefly: the various views of the philosophy of the law of international arbitration, which structure the thinking on the subject, can be captured in the form of three mental “representations,” which he terms the “monolocal” or “monadic” (“monolocalisatrice”) approach, the “Westphalian” (or “multilocal” or “decentralized”) approach, and the “transnational” approach. While Professor Gaillard recognizes that all three approaches make a valid point and have their supporters, he considers that only the third, transnational approach survives a rigorous philosophical criticism in terms of its coherence and effectiveness.

The first of the three representations – the “monolocal” approach – seeks to reduce the law governing international arbitration to the law of the seat, which according to this view constitutes the “forum” of the arbitration. This approach incorporates both an “objectivist” and a “subjectivist” strand. The objectivist strand was formulated in the most compelling fashion by F.A. Mann in his celebrated “Lex facit arbitrum” in 1967.[4] In the legal sense, 1 according to Mann, “no international arbitration exists.”[5] Like every system of private international law is a system of national law, “every arbitration is a national arbitration, that is to say, subject to a specific system of national law.”[6] In other words, the lex arbitri is the lex loci arbitri. As modern representatives of the “subjectivist” strand of this representation, Professor Gaillard cites the authors of the leading Swiss treatise on international arbitration – Jean-François Poudret and Sebastian Besson.

According to these authors, in choosing the seat of arbitration, the parties or, as the case may be, the arbitral institution or the arbitrators must be understood to have placed the arbitration under the exclusive jurisdiction of the law of the seat. Thus, unlike the objectivist strand, which draws the law governing the arbitration from a mere fact – the place of the seat – the subjectivist strand seeks to root the legitimacy of the primacy of the law of the seat in the free choice of the parties (or, as the case may be, the arbitral institution or the arbitrators).

Professor Gaillard sees the philosophical underpinning of the monolocal approach in the Statist version of legal positivism à la Hart and Kelsen: any legal activity, including arbitration, must derive its validity from a system of local law (or international law). The second, “Westphalian” approach sees the legal foundation of international arbitration in the plurality of local legal orders. Unlike the monolocal approach, the Westphalian approach is thus “multilocal” or “polyadic” (“multilocalisatrice”). According to this philosophy, every jurisdiction concerned that comes to contact with arbitration has an equally valid claim to pronounce on the validity of the award, in particular in the context of execution. In other words, under the multilocal approach the validity of international arbitration is ultimately tested at the point of execution. The philosophical thinking of such a Westphalian, multilocal approach is rooted in a decentralized view of the law of arbitration. The arbitral process – and the arbitral award – is validated retroactively, at the stage of recognition and enforcement, and thus has no “center.” Philosophically speaking, like the monolocal approach, the multilocal approach is based on a positivist view of the law of arbitration. The only difference is that the multilocal approach conceives of the relations between States according to a Westphalian model of sovereignty and inter-State relations. According to Professor Gaillard, the multilocal approach is embodied, in particular, in the New York Convention, which (unlike the earlier Geneva Protocol) severed the validity of the arbitral award for purposes of recognition and enforcement from its validity under the law of the seat.

The third, transnational representation is based on the idea that the legal nature or “legalness” (juridicité) of arbitration may be derived, not from the legal order of a State, whether the law of the seat or the place(s) of execution of the arbitral award, but from a “third” legal order – the legal order of arbitration (l’ordre juridique arbitral). While this approach builds on the earlier lex mercatoria debate, it goes beyond the applicable law concerns of this debate and raises the more fundamental question of the source of the authority of the arbitrators.

According to Gaillard, this approach is transnational (rather than “a-national”) in that it does not conceive of States in isolation of each other, but is concerned with cross-border commercial activities between States – and thus shifts the conceptual focus from the “plural” to the “collective.” It is this third approach, in Professor Gaillard’s view, that is the most appropriate representation of the reality of international arbitration as it exists today, and the one to which he lends his own support.

Professor Gaillard stresses that his three theories are “representations” of ways of thinking, and as such, matters of belief if not faith rather than matters of scientific truth. Accordingly, they cannot be judged in terms of right or wrong but only in terms of their coherence or effectiveness. This does not mean that they are without practical implications, and indeed, it is to these implications that Professor Gaillard devotes the second part of his book. It is also this part of the book – which covers matters such as anti-suit injunctions, litispendence between State courts and arbitral tribunals, and identification of the rules of law governing the merits of the claim – that is of most immediate use for an arbitration practitioner.

Professor Gaillard’s book is a powerful defense of the “autonomy” of the institution of international arbitration – autonomy not only in terms of the law governing the arbitral tribunal, but also in terms of procedure and substantive law. Professor Gaillard does not trust any theory that subordinates the institution of international arbitration to a local legal order – whether the law of the seat or the law of any other state where the enforcement of the arbitral award may be sought. Arbitration lawyers should not relax even if the number of arbitration-friendly jurisdictions has increased over the years and the non-interventionist stance has gained increasing acceptance. As Professor Gaillard puts it, a slave whose master has converted into a philosophical humanist is still a slave – he is free to come and go because his master allows him, not because he is truly free.

In developing a philosophical vision of the law of international arbitration that has important practical implications, Professor Gaillard manages to steer away from one of the common pitfalls of academic legal philosophy – practical irrelevance. Since just as much of the theory of public international law tends to collapse, all too easily, into one or another kind of political “realism” – and thus trade the professional function and independence of the discipline for its (perceived) greater effectiveness – the theory of private international law often tends to draw its ultimate justification from moral philosophy rather than from a conceptual analysis of its (all too) mundane professional function.

Consequently, just like the move of public international law theory towards political realism tends to weaken rather than strengthen international law, the move of private international law theory to moral philosophy tends to undermine the field’s intellectual independence – and, as a result, its practical relevance. 2 While practically consequential and as such standing out from the vast academic literature on legal philosophy, even those (like the present author) who share Professor Gaillard’s concerns and his vision of a practically relevant legal philosophy, may ask themselves whether it is indeed necessary, practically speaking, to go so far as to seek to create a legal fiction of a “legal order of arbitration” – since in the end, fiction it is, as recognized by Professor Gaillard himself, rather than a scientific truth. Since is it not the case that the same goal – the functional independence of international arbitration from undue interference by local law and local courts – may be achieved by less heavy conceptual tools? Is it not the case that both the monolocal and the Westphalian approach, although justly criticized by Professor Gaillard as exclusive representations of the institution of international arbitration, contain a kernel of truth about the reality of international arbitration?

As to the former, is it necessary, or indeed correct, to deny the practical relevance of the law of the seat in an international arbitration? Is it not true that, from the point of view of the arbitral tribunal (and by implication, the parties), the law of the seat is an important consideration since ultimately it is the courts of the seat that will determine, in case of a challenge, whether or not the arbitral award should be set aside, and that in this strictly legal (rather than philosophical) sense, arbitral tribunals are indeed subordinated to the law of the seat? Is it not true that it is precisely for this reason that parties prefer to localize their arbitral tribunals in jurisdictions such as Paris, London and Geneva – precisely because they know that the arbitration law of these jurisdictions is supportive of international arbitration, and that the courts in such jurisdictions are competent and well versed with issues arising in the context of international arbitration – and thus less likely than courts in many other jurisdictions to unduly interfere with the arbitration?

Similarly, is it not the case that the Westphalian approach captures the essence of international arbitration from the point of view of its users: is it not true that, from their point of view, the real value of an international arbitral award lies in its enforceability in any jurisdiction where the recalcitrant party may have assets, regardless of the seat of arbitration? More specifically, is it not true that, from the user’s point view, the more there are such jurisdictions – and accordingly, the more there are laws that apply to the execution of the award – the better? In other words, that the plurality of applicable laws is one of the most valuable assets of international arbitration rather than a conceptual problem? While perhaps taking a step or two too far in the direction of academic philosophy, Professor Gaillard’s concept of a transnational “arbitral legal order” remains philosophically attractive, even seductive. It is certainly true that international arbitration practitioners tend to form a professional community that is not limited by national borders or bar membership, and that many if not most of the members of this community tend to share a common understanding of the methods of private international law, the relevant standards of international due process and the broad transnational public policies that form the legal infrastructure of their profession.

While these methods, standards and policies have not been codified or endorsed by any legislature, they tend to form the conceptual, procedural and policy basis on which international arbitration is practiced. However, this does not necessarily mean that such methods, standards and policies form, or should be considered to form, any kind of “tiers droit.” In practice, the daily business of international arbitration is conducted on the basis of private procedural rules and substantive laws chosen by the parties, and while conflicts between such rules and laws and the relevant transnational private international law rules, due process standards or public policies do occur, they are in practice rare – although admittedly, when they do arise, they tend to attract attention and stir debate among arbitration lawyers – which in itself may explain the prominent role played by exception in the law of international arbitration.

However, if it is indeed the case that most arbitration lawyers most of the time conduct most of their daily business without any such conflicts, is it practically speaking necessary or justified to conclude that, because conflicts between local laws and rules and transnational private international law rules, due process standards and public policies may and do occur, the whole philosophy of the law of international arbitration should be founded on the possibility of such extraordinary incidents or circumstances? Is it not true that, while transnational rules, standards and policies may have to be invoked in certain extraordinary circumstances, in order to avoid the application of an undue local rule or ruling of a local court, this does not necessarily mean that such instances should be considered the ordinary course of business in international arbitration? In other words, rather than having a conceptually dominating role, should one not see such rules, standards and policies more as a conceptual reservation, applicable in certain circumstances, rather than as the rule of law itself?

Even assuming that their role is wider, and that they apply not only in certain extraordinary circumstances where the local rule or ruling is found to be particularly undue, but also to fill in gaps or to clarify ambiguities in the otherwise applicable local laws or private arbitration rules (thereby allowing the arbitrators to presume that the content of the local law or procedural rule is the same as that of the corresponding transnational rule), is it not true that they can fulfill this role without being elevated to the level of a “legal order of arbitration”? Apart from arguably not being strictly necessary from a practical point of view, the concept of “legal arbitral order” also tends to convey a somewhat idealized picture of the law of international arbitration.

Paraphrasing F.A. Mann, in a strict conceptual sense, there is no law of international arbitration. This is to say, there is no coherent or unified 3 law of international arbitration – there are only laws of international arbitration. It is hardly disputable that the law of international arbitration is marked by a certain systemic dépeçage: it is rare in international arbitration that only one law is applied; indeed, if this were the case, one would not be dealing with international arbitration.

The arbitration agreement, the arbitral process, the arbitral tribunal, the merits of the claim, or the subject matter of the dispute, and the recognition and enforcement of the arbitral award are rarely, if ever, governed by the same law. In other words, instead of a coherent or unified tiers droit, the law, or the “legal order,” of international arbitration is marked by a certain systemic decoherence: rather than a natural or conceptually coherent order grounded in moral philosophy, the image of this law resembles more that of a Frankensteinian figure – a legal entity composed of body parts originating from different jurisdictions and imbued by life only after its creation.

It might be conceptually more accurate to call such a figure a “mechanism” or even a “machine” rather than a legal “order” or indeed a “system.” The self-image of such a mechanism may not always be pretty, in particular if measured by classical standards of conceptual coherence or integrity (rather than, say, a Picassian standard of composition), but it does tend to fit more accurately with the cubist reality that it reflects. Such a fragmented (or perhaps more accurately, fractured) image of the world of international arbitration should not come as a surprise. After all, what international arbitration is all about is differences – differences between parties hailing from different jurisdictions and subject to different laws, submitted to arbitration before an arbitral tribunal often sitting in a third country and composed of members of different nationalities, and resulting in an award that is in principle enforceable in almost any jurisdiction, almost anywhere.

Assuming it is true that the ultimate criterion of academic relevance of any legal theory is the coherence of its doctrine of sources, then one must say that the law of international arbitration is not academically relevant – or that the criteria of academic relevance are themselves practically irrelevant. In practice, the real “source” of the law of international arbitration is not transnational rules of private international law, or international standards of due process, or transnational public policy. Its real “source” is differences, that is, differences between different applicable laws, or conflicts of laws, and, ultimately, differences between different parties. Without such differences international arbitration would not exist, not at least as a professional practice. In this sense, the law of international arbitration is academically problematic: it lacks the sort of natural integrity or conceptual coherence that legal philosophy has traditionally required from a legal system for it to be recognized as a legal system.

The law of international arbitration is not coherent or uniform. In reality, it leaks at the very source where the reality itself seeps in, in the form of differences between different parties. These differences, whether ultimately caused by changes in market circumstances or economic or political developments, or simply random contextual interference, tend to cause even the air-tightest cross-border commercial contract to leak and decohere, which in turn tends to lead to disputes between the parties and, ultimately, to international arbitrations.[7]

It is perhaps not surprising if the law of arbitration itself tends to reflect this original decoherence. Professor Gaillard’s book is an admirable inquiry into this complex web of differences that ultimately keep the law and practice of international arbitration alive and going. While his work may be too practically-oriented to attract the attention of more academic legal philosophers who tend to focus on more coherent or unified (albeit perhaps in reality non-existent) concepts of law, the loss would be exclusively of those who do not pay attention. Indeed, it would not be the first time that the legal academia would be caught sleeping, looking at itself in the mirror and believing that what it sees in front of itself is the image of the world.

Notes:

[1] Prof. Gaillard himself refers, inter alia, to Henri Batiffol’s classic oeuvre “Aspects philosophiques du droit international privé” of 1956 and Berthold Goldman’s celebrated 1963 Hague lectures “Les conflits de lois dans l’arbitrage international de droit privé” as sources of his intellectual inspiration.

[2] Pierre Lalive, “Book Review: Aspects Philosophiques du Droit de l’Arbitrage International,” 26 ASA Bulletin 700 (2008).

[3] See, e.g. the works cited by Prof. Gaillard: B. Oppetit, Théorie de l’arbitrage (1998); S. Bollée, les méthodes du droit international privé à l’épreuve des sentences arbitrales (2004); H. Arfazadeh, Ordre public et arbitrage international à l’épreuve de la mondialisation (2006).

[4] See F.A. Mann, Lex Facit Arbitrum, in International Arbitration Liber Amicorum for Martin Domke 157 (Pieter Sanders ed., 1967).

[5] Id. at p. 159.

[6] Id.

[7] Such a process of “decoherence” of the law is not unlike the corresponding (but inverse) phenomenon in quantum physics (“collapse” of the wave function). If in physics the virtual phenomenon (i.e. the wave function), when interfered with, “leaks” into the (classical) reality and thereby decoheres, in law it is the commercial or economic reality that tends to interfere with cross-border contracts, causing them (and, by extension, the law of international arbitration) to leak and decohere.

July 2005

Joe had survived the ordeal by the skin of his teeth. He had approached the edge of sanity many times after waking up without the ability to move his arms, legs, or vocal cords. He had become a quadriplegic, unable to communicate except by mouthing words. If his nurse, doctor, nurse’s aide, or relative or friend couldn’t read lips as they stood by his bedside, he was out of luck. It struck him as funny how some people had a skill for reading his two-word sentences that were inaudible. He would mouth "change diaper" or "water" or "change channel (the TV had only two main channels)" and only three or four people would understand. Gradually, his left hand and arm came back and he was able to point to his mouth (indicating water) or to his diaper (indicating change it. One of his few pleasures was the ability to control when he would pee. Peeing itself felt numb and tingly at the same time, but at least he could initiate it. He could do nothing else except form two-word silent sentences and slightly move his left hand and right big toe.).

But he had awoken with despair on his mind. He had two doctors who came by most often. One was a long-haired beautiful Indian woman who looked about 30. She could read his lips and did give him water. His mouth was caked with gunk and deposits from the oxygen they blew into his throat via the tracheotomy. At one point, he mouthed the words "poison me," "let me die" to her, but she only smiled. Nevertheless, he thought she understood, but just wouldn’t comply.

Everyone who visited made sure to tell him it "was a long road ahead" or "you’ve got a lot of work ahead before you get better." But no one had told him how he had gotten there. The last thing he remembered clearly was driving his rental car away from his dying mother’s hospital. No one told him that his paralysis and inability to talk were nearly 100 percent temporary. His girl friend, Alma, told him that on that fateful night he had jumped into a cab and hissed "the ER" to the driver as his dry cough grew worse and worse. All he heard during the three weeks after his awakening was bits and pieces: "nursing home" "aspirated a vegetable, probably a piece of broccoli" "funeral" "it’s in his head" "what do you want sweetie. I can’t read lips" "be sure to sleep on one side or the other, your butt bedsore is horrible, we wouldn’t want to infect that would we?"

He finally could make the motions, mainly with his left hand and his mouth, that he wanted a nurse "call button." His pneumonia was so terrible that his trach and mouth filled with saliva and secretions about twice an hour. He had been suctioned so much that the inside of his trachea was ultra-sensitive. Yet it had to be done. He heard rumors that the rehab hospital wouldn’t take him, because he had to be suctioned so much and they "weren’t in that business." He knew he’d be drugged up at a nursing home, but decided that he would prefer that to this environment, in which no one came for hours on end, especially at 3 a.m., when he often had laid there thinking he would drown in his own saliva. He had to turn his head to the left and spit out saliva onto his pillow; he had to let the build-up of solid-like formations in his mouth nearly cover his esophagus before mustering the energy to clear his throat; he had to tell God several times "Here I come, please be merciful on a jerk like me."

Throughout all of this, he had been "entertained," as he called it, by "hallucinations" brought on mainly by the doctors’ use of "opioids." These were repeated dream-like excursions into scenarios that remained crystal clear in his memory for weeks, now years, on end. They had involved nearly everyone he knew before his illness. He didn’t even attempt to interpret them, just relaxed and enjoyed them or replayed the memories in his mind.

After the ordeal, the easiest one to relay to his friends involved TV talk-show host David Letterman. In his "hallucination," he himself was reading the local paper and upon turning a middle page found a photo of Letterman sitting at his New York Rockefeller Center office reading something about cancer. The caption in the newspaper said, "Mr. Letterman has come to grips with his impending death from cancer." Joe saw this dream several times and thought it was true. He couldn’t discern reality from fantasy. When he finally was transferred to the rehab hospital a month later, he was shocked to find a brand-new Letterman show playing on his TV one night when he couldn’t sleep.

Another dream involved himself and a homeless man, both visiting an apartment in the upper corner of a shabby building in midtown New York. The woman was young and beautiful and Joe, in the dream, found himself competing with this beggar for her affections. Gaining access to her apartment for a date required intricate maneuvering of the metal lock. If she decided to spend the evening with either Joe or the man, she would stroll with one of them throughout the parks of New Jersey and the date would end with them climbing back up to her apartment through yards and yards of wooden hallways. Then Joe and the man would somehow get to the other corner of the building where a balcony or fire escape landing awaited them. They would then compete for her affections by diving – from 10 stories up – to the pavement below, landing on one – yes, one – finger and, somehow, propelling themselves backwards 10 stories to land on that same fire escape platform. In the dream most remembered by Col, he bested the beggar by being slightly faster and fancier in his dives. When Joe awoke at his first hospital and later at the rehab hospital, he thought there might, indeed, be a letter or call waiting from that woman.

Some dreams he recognized as fantasy, even though they, in fact, contained an element of truth. In one, his mother and father had come out of retirement to become con men. Both worked as a team fleecing a Korean airliner at LaGuardia airport out of the meals it had prepared for its customers. In the dream, his dad, a normally diffident man, was a fast-talking con man, who helped his wife dress as a flight attendant. They then pretended to know everything about the airliner convincingly enough for the guards to let them in the back end of the airplane. There, they would serve some fliers with the meals before slipping out the back again. The meals invariably were peanuts and chicken in soy sauce. The two then would call him, Joe, and his brothers, inviting them for supper at the house they had owned in Torrington (2,000 miles away—although it was blizzarding in both Torrington and at LaGuardia) for 45 years. Only Joe would show up – always in a blinding snowstorm, having to fight his way through whipping snow and frigid temperatures. It wasn’t until he got to the rehab hospital that he found out his mother indeed had died just after he awoke from the coma.

Easter Sunday 1916

This commemorates the Irishmen who stood up to the English at the Dublin Post Office, on Easter Sunday, 1916 Yeats wrote this poem after the last of the rebels was hanged in the courtyard of Killmaenem Gaol in Dublin later that year.

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats

Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.

--W.B. Yeats

Early 1970s. Lennon was not a scholar as is the pretense of this website, but he had a worldly knowledge at a young age, with self- schooling. And this poem seems even more appropriate in 2009.

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

Nov. 5, 2009

Harold Reynolds is an attorney in Scarsdale, N.Y. 

   When my mother, Anna, was 8, she was sent by her father at five o’clock every morning in winter to the nearby East River docks to pick coal that fell from moored barges. One morning a tug captain, approaching from behind, shouted at her and grabbed her by the shoulder. He immediately saw that he was holding a trembling deaf child whose speech, such as it was, he could not understand. He filled her bag for her, telling her in gestures not to be afraid, to come back for more. Thus, as my mother told me the tale when I was a little boy, there was left in my mind the imprint of the tug captain as a sea borne, solitary figure, watchful and benevolent.

     At 14 in 1942, I went anxiously to a maritime law firm on John Street in lower Manhattan in answer to an opening for a part-time office boy at forty cents an hour. While waiting to be interviewed, I looked out the office window and saw below at the slip at the foot of Fulton Street a red painted tug and, at her stern, his foot resting on a winch, a tug captain. He was, I thought, a sign, and for an instant I felt safe as if I were not in an office but at home.

      When in 1956 I became a lawyer, I saw that I was becoming blind to the memory of the benevolent figure of the tug captain. I now saw that the coal was not his to give, nor my mother hers to receive, and my impoverished grandfather , a person to be prosecuted as an accomplice in the theft of coal and for endangering the welfare of a child. After three years of study and a year as clerk to a federal judge, I had become skilled in seeing life as through a screen of rights and wrongs, a place where people, on close observation, are often lifted up and, more often, cast down, by chance. As for the tug captain, he had disappeared in the twilight of subfusc law books, papers and pens, tiresome lawyers and drab judges. Sea borne he had come, enfolded in the scriptures of the law he had gone.

                                        Harry Reynolds

Copyright 2009

Harold Reynolds