law-say-the-gardeners-is-the-sun.html.pm

#lang pollen

◊define-meta[page-title]{Auden, "Law, say the gardeners, is the sun"}
◊define-meta[short-title]{WH Auden: Law is...}
◊define-meta[original-date]{2021-01-24}
◊define-meta[featured-image-url]{assets/auden.png}

◊declare-work[#:type "article" #:id "Hussain" #:author "Nasser
Hussain" #:title "Auden's Law Like Love" #:journal "Law, Culture and
the Humanities" #:year "2019" #:url
"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1743872118787567?journalCode=lcha"]

This poem by WH Auden presents many of the conceptions of law we
encountered in our Jurisprudence course.

You can read the full poem
[here](https://allpoetry.com/Law,-Like-Love).◊note{That site, like
many others, gives it the title, "Law, Like Love," but it was
published without a title and anthologized by its first line "Law, say
the gardeners, is the sun." ◊cite["Hussain"]}

It opens with references to law and obedience that are based in
prediction and perhaps natural law.

◊codeblock{
Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
}

The idea of law as prediction is also found in the writings of Kelsen
and Holmes Jr.

The next stanza presents a tension between tradition --- couched in
wisdom --- and sensitivity to new circumstances.

◊codeblock{
Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.
}

This reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr's ◊em{dragon} of
tradition that we must decide to either "kill" or "tame" and make a
"useful animal."

Auden then presents HLA Hart's separation of law and morals (◊em{Yet
law-abiding scholars write: / Law is neither wrong nor right}) and
notions of notice and prospectivity (◊em{Law is as I've told you
before, Law is as you know I suppose}).

◊declare-work[#:id "Cover" #:type "article" #:author-given "Robert M"
#:author-family "Cover" #:title "Forward: *Nomos* and Narrative"
#:journal "Harv L Rev" #:volume "97" #:issue "4" #:year "1983--1984"
#:first-page "4" #:url
"https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3690&context=fss_papers"]

Of the works we read in Jurisprudence, Robert Cover's "◊em{Nomos} and
Narrative"◊note-cite["Cover"] brought the most significant additions
to my perspectives on law. Cover replaces the notion of a single
"legal system" with a plurality of "normative universes" requiring "no
state," with legal meaning created in each through "commitment." I
couldn't tell how literally Cover was equating this commitment with
potential violence, but he wrote:

◊blockquote{
The state's claims over legal meaning are, at bottom, so closely tied
to the state's imperfect monopoly over the domain of violence that the
claim of a community to an autonomous meaning must be linked to the
community's willingness to live out its meaning in defiance.
}

Under this view, state law only has a privileged position because of
the state's "imperfect monopoly over violence."

I find this theme in the following stanzas.

◊codeblock{
Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.
}

The "soft idiot" could be one who declares something to be law without
the real commitment either personally or from a community to "live out
its meaning."

There's a lot more in this poem, and other meaninings you might have
taken from it. Please share your thoughts!