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There is a Hole in your Knowledge about a Law
What is a law?
It is such a simple question.
But, . . . can you answer it?
Let's see.
Pull all your knowledge about a law from your head and put it right here on the table in front of us. That's right. Lay it all out.
There are many answers to this simple question. Yet, most answers offer knowledge that is dead not alive, sterile not fecund, inert not generative. The only answer that I would judge correct is an answer that transports us from a law in general to a law in particular and, reversing direction, from a law in particular to a law in general. Any answer that does not show us the door that leads between the general and the particular is inadequate.
Have you supplied a correct answer?
What if I told you that there is a hole in your knowledge about a law - that something is missing? A mistake was made and your law school failed to teach you a legal doctrine that would have made you a clearer legal thinker? Would the words, Oops! or Sorry!, make it all better?
But don't take me at my word that this has happened. Demand proof.
The proof will be found in a loaf of bread.
Have you ever baked a loaf of bread? To do so, ingredients are needed as well as a recipe that tells you how to process the ingredients. The ingredients of a loaf of bread are flour, water, yeast, salt and, perhaps, a pinch of sugar. They are concrete not abstract, substantial not ethereal - they can be touched, named and numbered.
Now, here is proof that there is a hole in your knowledge about a law. The proof is incontrovertible because I won't supply it to you; you will supply it to me.
Would you answer two questions?
- What are the ingredients of a law?
- What is the recipe that transforms a law's ingredients into a law itself and, in the other direction, from a law itself into its ingredients?
Think about the questions. Can you answer them?
Isn't it perverse that the ingredients of something as common as a loaf of bread can be touched, named and numbered; yet, the ingredients of something as important as a law cannot?
If you cannot answer the two questions, your inability confirms the existence of a hole in your knowledge about a law. It is a hole that A Unified Theory of a Law fills. A Unified Theory of a Law is simply the recipe that teaches you the building blocks of a law. It teaches how to assemble them into a law, and, reversing direction, how to disassemble a law into them.
In Greek mythology, the goddess, Athena, was born when she emerged from the skull of her father, Zeus, as a fully grown adult. Inexplicably, she had bypassed infancy and adolescence. Our laws likewise also seem to jump out of our heads fully grown without having passed through any prior stages of development. In reality, however, a law, like the tip of an iceberg, is but the fruit of a process that takes place below the murky surface of the intellect of a lawmaker. There, cloaked in mystery, the process has heretofore enjoyed immunity from scrutiny and discourse. A Unified Theory of a Law exposes the process, presents it to us and brings it under our control.
Glossary
- BUILDING BLOCKS:
- A law is assembled from building blocks. A law can also be disassembled into building blocks. Taken together, the building blocks constitute a common structure that underlies all of our laws. They are independent of the words of the law. A recipe called The Unified Theory of a Law teaches you how to turn building blocks into a law and how to turn a law into its building blocks.
- FIDELITY:
- Fidelity in A Unified Theory of a Law is the accuracy with which the model of a law inside your head reflects or corresponds to the laws that run around outside it in the legal world. A high fidelity model of a law generates a fair and accurate representation of our laws; a low fidelity model generates only a poor approximation. A Unified Theory of a Law increases the fidelity of your model.
- INGREDIENT:
- The ingredients of a law are its building blocks. The building blocks are assembled together into a law according to a recipe. The ingredients can be touched, named and numbered. They are not ephemeral but substantial. They are not abstract but concrete. They are invisible to those whose mind is infected by the monolithic heresy.
- LEGAL FISSION:
- A Unified Theory of a Law is powered by the insight that legal fission is possible. The physics of legal fission postulate that a law can be split into two components 1) its words and 2) its structure. They exist independently of each other. Together they constitute a law. While many have taken notice of the words of a law, knowledge of the structure of a law is still rare. The words, like ornaments, adorn the structure of a law. The words change; but the structure stays the same. Like the DNA of a cell, the structure of a law repeats itself over and over again in every instance of a law. To generate a law's meaning, both its words and its structure cooperate. Anyone who wishes to push meaning into or pull meaning out of a law must be mindful of a law's structure. Any failure to respect the structure of a law generates inscrutable legalese and legal misunderstanding.
- STATIC VS. DYNAMIC KNOWLEDGE:
- Knowledge can be classified as either static or dynamic. Static knowledge is sterile, inert and not very useful. Dynamic knowledge is fecund, generative and useful. Let me illustrate the distinction with examples. If you told me the numbers, 17, 34, 3, you would have given me useless knowledge. However if you told me the numbers and would have also told me that they were the combination to a treasure chest, you would have given me useful knowledge. "At night, the sky is red", is useless knowledge. However, if you told me "red sky at night, sailors delight", you would have told me something useful. Dynamic knowledge is transportative: it transports you from one place to another. Static knowledge is a dead end: it does not transport you from where you are to another place. The test, therefore, that distinguishes static from dynamic knowledge is whether it has the ability to sweep you off your feet and transport you somewhere else. A Unified Theory of a Law is dynamic knowledge because it transports you from the genral to the particular and, vice versa, from the particular to the general.
- MONOLITHIC HERESY:
- A legal thinker is the grip of the monolithic heresy who cannot disassemble a law into its building blocks. Such a legal thinker is akin to a physicist who, being stuck at the level of the atom, refuses to believe in the existence of sub-atomic particles.
- THE PROCESS THAT GIVES BIRTH TO OUR LAWS:
- Our laws do not come into being full fledged having been delivered as the stork delivers babies. Prior to the birth of a law is a process. It has heretofore existed below the murky surface of the intellect of a lawmaker. There, cloaked in mystery, the process has heretofore enjoyed immunity from scrutiny and discourse. A Unified Theory of a Law exposes the process, makes it visible and brings it under our control. Each stage of the process has been mapped onto The Triangle of Law and the Periodic Table of the Elements of a Law.
- RECIPE:
- A Unified Theory of a Law is the recipe that transforms legal ingredients into a law and, unlike a recipe for a loaf of bread, also operates vice versa telling us how to transform a law into its building blocks.
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This work is licensed by John Bosco under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.
Last edited by John Bosco on Aug 4, 2009 10:06 am GMT-5.