Imagine a lawyer sitting down to write about the laws of the United States.  She knows it is an impossibly broad task to sum up the vast expanse of federal law, but she wants to express to the reader that the laws of the United States are, in the main, right and just.  Suppose also, that she chooses to address her writing to the “United States” personified, and she writes in the mode of a modern panegyric. 

Even under these eccentric circumstances, can we imagine her writing something like, “Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments . . . With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.  In the ways of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.  I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.  I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word . . . Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law”?  (Psalm 119:5-6, 13-16, 18).

 If she did, she would feel very alone if she had done much reading in her subject.  Many legal treatises and law journal articles have passed dully over my eyes and none of them extol the law in this way.  Even lawmakers, when they’re introducing a bill they’re sponsoring, do not speak of their proposed law in such terms.  The most enthusiastic supporter of civil rights would not praise the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in this way.  At their best, such laws are expedient, or practical, or groundbreaking, or necessary.  They are never wondrous, wonderful, sure, true, or righteous. 

Read more