Thoreau: Solon opening the tombs at Salamis

When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the Athenians, and not to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megareans to the opposite side. There they were to be interrogated.

Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature; they can offer no reason or "guess," but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always the only pertinent question and the only satisfactory reply.

-- from Thoreau's Week

Thoreau: "commerce is really as interesting as nature"

In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Thoreau describes a hike during which he spent the night alone on a mountaintop. He passes some of the time reading discarded newspapers:

I sat up during the evening, reading by the light of the fire the scraps of newspapers in which some party had wrapped their luncheon; the prices current in New York and Boston, the advertisements, and the singular editorials which some had seen fit to publish, not foreseeing under what critical circumstances they would be read. I read these things at a vast advantage there, and it seemed to me that the advertisements, or what is called the business part of a paper, were greatly the best, the most useful, natural, and respectable. Almost all the opinions and sentiments expressed were so little considered, so shallow and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the paper must be weaker in that part and tear the more easily. The advertisements and the prices current were more closely allied to nature, and were respectable in some measure as tide and meteorological tables are; but the reading-matter, which I remembered was most prized down below, unless it was some humble record of science, or an extract from some old classic, struck me as strangely whimsical, and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme, such as youths write and after burn. The opinions were of that kind that are doomed to wear a different aspect to-morrow, like last year's fashions; as if mankind were very green indeed, and would be ashamed of themselves in a few years, when they had outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover, a singular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely the slightest real success; and the apparent success was a terrible satire on the attempt; the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best jokes. The advertisements, as I have said, such as were serious, and not of the modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts; for commerce is really as interesting as nature. The very names of the commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if they had been inserted in a pleasing poem,—Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood. Some sober, private, and original thought would have been grateful to read there, and as much in harmony with the circumstances as if it had been written on a mountain-top; for it is of a fashion which never changes, and as respectable as hides and logwood, or any natural product. What an inestimable companion such a scrap of paper would have been, containing some fruit of a mature life. What a relic! What a recipe! It seemed a divine invention, by which not mere shining coin, but shining and current thoughts, could be brought up and left there.

Separation of Powers

Last weekend, I finally made time to read Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50 (2010). In Citizens United, the Supreme Court examined whether it's constitutional to limit how much private corporations may spend on political speech (specifically, so-called campaign speech within a certain number of days before an election to federal office). While reading, I had a rare moment of seeing our legal system from the outside.

The basic setup of our government is so familiar to most Americans (especially lawyers) that we have trouble even imagining that things could be any other way. It just seems inevitable that an open society would arrange itself pretty much the way ours is. We have courts that do this, and a legislative body that does that, and officials who do some other thing.

What occurred to me when finishing the majority opinion (by Justice Kennedy) was the weakness of his explanation why the government's purportedly compelling interests were insufficient. That led me to musing about an alternative opinion, in which the Court says, "The interests asserted by the government might be compelling and might not. We're simply not sure. So let's find out. We'll hold for now that corporate campaign speech may not be restricted and then see how that works. Come back in two years, when we'll look at this issue again. Maybe experience will enable us to decide whether the government has a compelling interest here."

Our courts don't do that. In our system, a court has to dispose of the controversy before it. Granted, the court might dispose of the controversy on grounds that are procedural rather than substantive, but it ultimately has to do something final, at least as far as its own jurisdiction is concerned. The court can't engage in experiments. It gets to say only yes, no, who owes whom how much, and (sometimes) who has to do what for whom. The litigants have to use their own resources or other branches of government to put what the court has decided into practice.

I don't mean to imply that this is a bad system (or that Citizens United was wrongly decided). But it's not the only system. Thinking about other possibilities is entertaining if nothing else.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

I'm currently rereading Thoreau's Week. I first tried to read it when I was in high school, but since I expected it to be a conventional camping story, I didn't get far. It wasn't until I was 22 or 23 that I read the whole thing. Like Emerson (but less so), he writes in an aphoristic style, evidently stringing together notebook extracts. To enjoy it, you mustn't expect to get anywhere quickly.