"The Snake That Ate Its Tail"
                            (a word study)
                  (c) 1986 by Frederick Graves, J.D.

                             INTRODUCTION

What is Jurisprudence?

.    Having heard the word bandied about in law school, I decided I
would amplify my education by discovering just what the complex word
might mean.  I searched its etymology and traced its history from
Rome's senate, where the word and idea of Jurisprudence had their
birth, to my law school's colloquial classrooms, where the venerable
old word is ludicrously misused and where the old idea it comprehends
is universally ignored.

.    This is no accident, I found.  And I can hardly blame my dean and
professors or charge the authors of my texts with the error.  They
inherited it - as I hope presently to demonstrate.

The meaning of Jurisprudence has been hidden from us.

.    Philosophers and jurists and textbook writers and professors have
replaced the old meaning of Jurisprudence with a new idea, an idea
that has many names, an idea that holds the world in its grip.  The
proponents of this new idea insist we no longer need the old idea of
Jurisprudence.  Indeed, they say the old ideas are a barrier to
mankind's progress (whoever "mankind" may be we find ourselves hard-
pressed to discover), and they contend that all "right- thinking" folk
should work together to divest our land of that unscientific notion
the word once conveyed to wiser men than they.

.    And so, by fiat of scholars and judges and fools, the old meaning
of Jurisprudence, a treasure men once died for, now lies forgotten in
the dusty pages of old books.

                              ETYMOLOGY

.    Jurisprudence is derived from two Roman roots - juris and prudens
- the Latin words for Justice and Prudence.  And yet, the definition
one finds in any modern dictionary is "the science of law". Clearly,
something vital has been omitted.

.    Juris (also IVRIS) is the genitive (possessive) case singular of
the Latin noun, jus (or IVS) meaning "right".  This is not "right" as
when we say a citizen has rights.  It is "right" as when we say a
certain person did what's right.  The Sanskrit equivalent of jus is
yoh, meaning "health" and a near equivalent of the Hebrew yod meaning
"source of light".  The Avestan equivalent, from Persia's writings of
Zoroaster is yaozdadaiti, a word that means "purification".  Other
words equivalent to jus relate to stretching a thing till it is
perfectly straight or carefully bending it into a perfect right angle
as at the corner of a square or the intersection of a cross.

.    We must note that jus, in Latin, is not another word for "law".
Indeed, "right" and "law" are two distinct ideas in Latin.  Each has
its own identity, stands on its own, and is distinct from the other.
The Latin name for "law" is lex, not jus.

.    Lex is the mechanism of sovereign power, the body of codified
precepts and rules, the law that validates the force of armies and
gives an arm to the orders of magistrates.  Lex is the law men make
for themselves - right or wrong.

.    Jus is another idea altogether.  Jus refers to that which is
proper and fair in fact.  Jus is what's right - whether man's lex
makes it legal or illegal.  Jus is embodied in eternal principles, a
law established by Wisdom beyond man's courts and legislatures.
Jus is the first root of Jurisprudence - not lex.

.    To the French, what's "right" is droit, while their written "law"
is loi.  The German says what's "right" is recht, while his code of
rules is gesetz.

.    The first is "law" as it ought to be, law based on eternal
verities, the utopian ideal where things are as God would have them
be, where things are "right".

.    The second is "law" in fact, law as it is, rule derived from the
sovereign power of the state, the written law, right or wrong, the
gavel of our courts, the chains of gaol.

.    Allan Bloom in his recent best-seller speaks about the movement
of thought, begun by the Greeks, in which "Distinctions between the
good and ones own, between nature and convention, between the just and
the legal" (1) are signs. [emphasis added]  Bloom tells us that todays
student has, in the name of enlightenment, done away with truth as
something self evident or self existing and in its place has put a new
axiom by which he insists, "The relativity of truth is not a
theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free
society ..." (2)  There is no jus to the modern thinker.  Only lex
remains, whether jus or not.  And therein lies a great moral danger.

.    As obviously distinct as jus and lex may have seemed to our
forebears, the subtlety of their divergence seems to outstrip the
intellect of many modern writers and law professors who have no
understanding of their difference.  In consequence, our heritage is
being robbed of eternal principles by men and women who write and
teach today about a brave new world that waits on times horizon where
lex is always jus.  They have hidden the difference from us, and they
promise what they can't deliver.

.    Isn't it interesting that the degree received at graduation from
many law schools is Juris Doctor, not Lex Doctor?  Indeed, does not
todays legal education emphasize lex and give old juris short shrift
at best?

.    Sir John William Salmond in "The Names of Law", published in
1920, said, "[Our] purpose... is to consider, in respect of their
origins and relations, the various names and titles which have been
borne by the law in different languages... in the hope that juridical
terms may be found to throw some light upon the juridical ideas of
which they are manifestations." (3)  Certainly some light is needed! 
Sir Salmond distinguishes between the two ideas of law, further
clarifying for us the meaning of Jurisprudence.  "If we inquire after
the cause of this duplication of terms we find it in the double aspect
of the complete juridical conception of law.  Law arises from the
union of justice and force, of right and might.  It is justice
recognized and established by authority.  It is right realized through
power.  Since, therefore, it has two sides and aspects, it may be
looked at from two different points of view, and we may expect to
find, as we find in fact, that it acquires two different names.  Jus
is law looked at from the point of view of right and justice; lex is
law looked at from the point of view of authority and force." (4)

.    We need to contemplate the differences between eternal jus, or
right, and temporal lex, or force.  The contrast is essential.  As
Thomas Cowan wrote in 1956, jus is  "... the law as it ought to be
rather than as it is ..." (5)  He says the "abiding concern" of
Jurisprudence is the nature of jus-tice.  A short 30 years later, I
would change his "is" to "should be but isn't"

.    To illustrate the relationship between these two ideas we have
the so-called Scales of Justice.  The pans support each other only
when their opposing contents are balanced.  In one pan is lex, law as
it is. In the other pan is jus, law as it ought to be.  What greater
goal for jurists and legislators than to balance these two?

.    And yet, we can never make them equal when we do not understand
them or refuse to do so.  We must especially beware of those in our
midst who say, "Pshaw!  They are one and the same!"

.    They are not.  Each word represents a different idea, and we can
no more easily change the meaning of jus than we can change the path
of Jupiter.  Jus is jus, i.e., right is right - and that will never
change!  Lex is lex, i.e., the law is the law - but the law does
change and must change until it holds the Scales in balance with
Eternal Right according to God's Eternal Plan.

.    That man must search for God's Intention is axiomatic.  That no
man or set of men is entitled to a special view or emolument in
consequence of their interpretation of God's Will is equally axiomatic
and must be defended against with all our energies.  But we must never
lose sight of the goal: That our law will one day rest in the balance
with His Truth - one on one.  And though eternity may be too short a
span for this accomplishment, it must never cease to be our goal.

.    If we say our lex is jus because it is the lex, we err, for jus
is the Eternal Law of Right, not man's law of might.  The nemesis of
modern juridical thinking is that today's emancipated jurist wants to
build jus from man's secular wisdom, without mention of eternal
principles, without mention of God or even the innate nature of an
Eternal Cosmos - i.e., without Principles.

What gets built is lex, and more lex, not jus.

.    Others have observed this modern tendency to ignore God in
matters of Jurisprudence.  Cobban predicted dire consequences when he
wrote in 1941, "It would seem that we must acquiesce in the
abandonment of the [Eternal Law of Right] by the modern world, even
though to do so is to accept the rule of arbitrary human will in the
life of society. Henceforth there can be no ethical standards of
social and political behavior, because will cannot make right." (6)
[emphasis added]

.    Montesquieu saw, 200 years ago, the emergence of the idea that
has the world in its grip.  He admonished us to know that God and
God's Law are real.  "They who assert that a blind fatality produced
the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly," he
said, "for can any thing be more unreasonable than to pretend that a
blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?" (7)  He
based his thinking on the existence of "a prime reason" and said that
"laws are relations subsisting between [the prime reason] and [man]." 
He added, "Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own
making, but they have some likewise which they never made. Before 
there were intelligent beings, [and] before [written] laws were made,
there were relations of... justice.  To say that there is nothing just
or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the
same as saying that before [one draws] a circle all the radii [are]
not equal." (8)

Now let's examine the second root of Jurisprudence.

.    Prudentia is "practical understanding or wisdom, sagacity (as a
cosmic or divine force)". (9)

.    Prudens is the adjective form of prudentia, a contraction of
providens, comprised of pro and videns, "forward" and "seeing".  Thus
Prudence is "the power of seeing in advance, the faculty of looking or
planning ahead, a prescient force exercising powers of creation and
direction (as a deity)". (10)

.    Prudence, therefore, is always properly related to Deity and to
the view that all our acts have consequences dictated by a Law not of
man's making.  Prudence is the highest form of wisdom.  Carl Claudy
wrote in 1953 that Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues of
ancient civilization.  He says, "Consider Prudence as meaning a wisdom
of both heart and mind, and it becomes something high and holy and
much more impressive than mere precaution... the modern and colloquial
meaning of the word." (11)

.    And yet, if we dare say that Jurisprudence is a high and holy
wisdom of both heart and mind, a prescience to be used for finding the
Eternal Right and to establish Justice by making lex agree with jus,
our secular scholars would at once denounce us as fanatical
extremists.

Yet, this precisely is the meaning of Jurisprudence.

.    Solomon, the wisest jurist of all, said, "Prudence is the
principle thing; therefore get Prudence, and with all thy getting get
understanding." (12)

                                USAGE

.    Jurisprudence is used today as just another word for law.  We
have medical jurisprudence, for example, a body of law developing
around the field of medicine.  There is commercial jurisprudence, the
body of business law, and criminal jurisprudence, the codes by which
we protect society from its infractors.  Since 1925, the Supreme Court
has used the word Jurisprudence in no less than 576 cases - and every
time it has been just another word for "law".  Not once in 60 years,
incidentally, did any Justice undertake to offer us a definition for
this much forgotten word.

.    Ulpian, a Roman jurist, did define Jurisprudence.  He said,
"Juris prudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi
atque injusti scientia."  To us he says, "Jurisprudence is a knowledge
both human and divine, to understand what is just and what is unjust."

.    Cicero penned almost exactly the same sentence in 43 B.C.

.    Blackstone wrote, "Aristotle himself said... Jurisprudence is the
principal and most perfect branch of ethics." (14)

.    And, in 1628, Sir Edward Coke praised Jurisprudence as a
"gladsome light".

.    By 1762, a new form of reason was beginning to appear, and men
like Adam Smith were saying, "Jurisprudence is the theory of rules by
which governments ought to be directed." (15) [emphasis added] Only a
slight shift of meaning, but the hole was in the dike - and no one
complained.

.    In the tumultuous years that followed, Jurisprudence fell on hard
times, philosophically speaking, and Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1827, "As
to the jurisprudentialist, his most common state is a sort of middle
state between impostor and dupe."  Clearly, the new idea was gaining
sway, and old ideas would soon begin to topple.

.    By the end of the Nineteenth Century, any considerations of
Jurisprudence as "a knowledge human and divine" were pretty much
tossed in the dustbin.  God was being replaced by the new idea.  In
place of Deity we had that new enlightenment called science.  The
modernists were certain they would find answers to every question
without resort to any worn-out Cosmic Truth or Eternal Principle.

.    In 1879, Austin had distinguished "general Jurisprudence or the
philosophy of positive law from what may be styled particular
Jurisprudence or the science of particular law."  Positive law was now
in one pan of the Scales of Justice, and in the other pan was science.

.    By the end of World War I, God was either dead or dying.  Had not
God let our boys die at the Marne?  What sort of God is this to be
creator of a world with so much hateful death and pain?  The scholars,
secretly hoping to be gods themselves, wrote, "God is dead."  And the
whisper echoed down the halls of scholarship.

.    "Science!" was the hue and cry.  "Science will save us!", they
said.  "God is dead!  Man is God!  And, Science is His Name!"

.    And Jurisprudence was almost imperceptibly reduced to a mere
exercise in theories and hypotheses, a game for scholars, a branch of
modern science propped precariously on the pinnings of statistical
mathematics.

.    LeBuffe and Hayes, in 1938, said it clearly.  "Jurisprudence is
the practical science which investigates the nature, origin, and
development of law." (16)

.    By 1957, scholars searching for the meaning of Jurisprudence
said, "The result of [our] investigation thus far is to establish the
negative conclusion that nowadays the word 'Jurisprudence' does not
mean certain things.  Indeed, it would appear that the word has no
usual meaning, and it is no cynicism to say that 'Jurisprudence' means
whatever anyone wants it to mean." (17)

.    The atheists had scored their victory, at least in Academia, and
God indeed was dead - at least for them.

.    And so one sees with each succeeding generation, the triumph of
ignorance over truth.  From the ancient Roman jurists, through the
rebellions of International Republicanism and the atrocities of German
Nazi Socialism, and lastly to the horrors of the Atomic Age itself.
Once the title for a knowledge human and divine, of what is just and
what is unjust, the name of Jurisprudence has become the handle for
that sterile science called statistical prediction, upon which we now
base the premise of our Western Law as something judges do and mortals
merely muddle through.

.    Who should tell us the meaning of Jurisprudence - the Roman
jurists, Ulpian and Cicero, or some conceited clique of modernist New
England law professors?

                               HISTORY

.    Notice how our problem has arisen from mere misuse of a word and
from our failure to discriminate between jus and lex.  Note, too, how
our ignorance is prodded on by the atheists' rejection of Providence
and our unwillingness to cause them stress.

.    Now that 1984 is history, we laugh at Orwell's predictions. 
Where is the titan beast that would rule our lives and regiment our
thinking?  We know in 1986 that we are not automatons, nor are we
spied upon by telescreens like those that pried into Winston's and
Julia's intimacies.

And we are smugly certain that Big Brother is not watching.

.    Yet we have missed the darker implication of Orwell's story!  Big
Brother is not our enemy, and 1984 is not the signal year.

.    "How is the dictionary getting on?", Winston asked his comrade
Syme, who worked with him in the Research Department.

.    "We're getting the language into its final shape," came the
answer. ... the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human
being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are
having now." (18)

.    So begins Orwell's story of mere mortals struggling with the
tyrannies of power.  It is an ageless story of unbridled oligarchy
bent on self perpetuation, without concern for human consequence,
heedless of history's hard lessons, and committed to build a new
tomorrow by destroying the past's traditions, art, and language.

.    Wonderful, the power of words!  Indeed, it is our language of
words that makes us human - not prehensile thumbs or an ability to
stand erect on hind legs. With words we build reality from dreams.
With words we plan for our future.  With words we preserve the past -
or lose it.  For it is also with words that we hide from the truth by
revising reality to suit our selfish purposes.

.    The choice of seeking God or following after man's amusement is
again before us, as it has been presented to every age.  We may seek
God's Right and work together to establish our Jurisprudence on the
principle that God is all Reality, conscious of Himself, and dictating
the consequence of our morality both individually and as a nation - or
we may turn from His Truth and seek instead the wisdom of the strong,
permit ourselves to be ruled by a caste of atheists whose goal is
pleasure for themselves no matter what the cost to our posterity. 
This is the timeless choice, and every age has acted on it - one way
or the other.  To fail to make this choice is nonetheless a choice
and, either way, we can not escape the consequence of our decision or
our refusal to decide.

.    The vast potentials of a pure God-seeking Jurisprudence lie
forgotten in the yellowed pages of old books.  We can take it up again
and rightfully defend the widows and homeless, hoping for the best,
seeking God's approval, faithful He will bless our land when we are
humble in His service, or we can let the spirit sleep within the old
books until it is discovered by some wiser children who will turn the
hearts of their fathers to the Truth.

.    Whatever our decision, Jurisprudence as the Romans coined it will
remain a living spirit till the end of time - heedless of our so-
called wisdom, heedless of our eloquent debates, heedless of our most
scholarly law review articles and classroom rhetoric.  For
Jurisprudence is a spirit that can not be bound in books nor trapped
within the frailties of the human mind.  And I believe Almighty God
will one day prove His Jurisprudence when at last we stand alone
before that Bar that waits for every one.

.    We should study Jurisprudence as a knowledge holy and divine to
learn what is right and what is just.  Our nation ought to base her
laws on a well-formed Jurisprudence while, in fact, we have no such
agreement (except inasmuch as it resides within our wise
Constitution).

.    If asked by one of those bustling, energetic countries we so
casually call the third world, "What is the Jurisprudence of your
United States system of laws?" we could only reply that ours is a
Constitutional Republic.  Yet, if they pressed for more, anxious to
establish their own nation on the soundest foundations and so insure
Liberty for their posterity, we would at last be compelled to instruct
them in the fine art of statistical analysis and confirm that we
believe that justice is what nine men say it is, and what's right is
whatever a majority of television viewers say it is.

We have no Jurisprudence!

.    Law is a living force.  By it and it alone the lives of men are
either blessed by Liberty or stolen by tyranny.  Now we have a choice
to make.  Will we base our law on principles or preference?

.    Rudolph von Ihering, writing in 1879, said, "The end of the law
is peace.  The means to that end is war.  So long as the law is
compelled to hold itself in readiness to resist the attacks of wrong -
and this it will be compelled to do until the end of time - it cannot
dispense with war.  The life of the law is a struggle, a struggle of
nations, of state power, of classes, and of individuals." (19)  That
struggle and that warfare are all too real, yet we can overcome the
most determined foe if we will arm ourselves with God's Truth and
coordinate all our actions by agreeing to a Jurisprudence based on
principles.

For, without a Jurisprudence, all law is tyranny.

.    Only by a Jurisprudence can we set limits for our law and justify
its means by being mindful of its ends.  Yet, we are not in these
perilous times agreed on a single Jurisprudence nor, for that matter,
are we trusting in the Truth of an Eternal God.

.    At the turn of this century, there was a great revolution in
Western Jurisprudence.  Before that time, Jurisprudence rested on the
premise that there exist certain immutable and eternal principles of
Justice.  What those principles were, in particular, was a matter of
continuing dispute - however, the existence of them was never put in
question but by fools, and they were seldom taken seriously by any but
the most unwise or unethical leaders.  There was a tacit consensus
that legislatures and courts should make and apply our laws so as to
approximate these Cosmic Truths.  An example is that "all men are
created equal, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights".
Naturally, there were frequent disagreements as to which statutes and
which applications best mirrored the intentions of Deity, but all
agreed in those days that each of us inherits a world that comes
complete with its own rules - rules of nature and rules of human
behavior - natural rules not codified by men, hidden rules that ought
to be our goal and for which we should confidently search.

.    Blackstone said, "Man is entirely a dependent being, subject to
the laws of his Creator, to whose will he must conform."  He is not
saying we do not have free will.  Not at all.  Rather he and those who
followed his teaching believed that none of us can be completely happy
in this life unless we live according to God's eternal principles of
happiness: The Golden Rule and a knowledge that our every word, each
deed, and even our secret thoughts are known to Him, recorded for
eternity where they fix our fate both in this world and in the World
to Come.  Blackstone's "Classical Jurisprudence" took God's Eternal
Law for granted.

.    Change came when individuals just prior to the turn of this
century began to use law as a tool for social engineering.  They
rejected principles, replacing them with practicality.  There were no
longer absolutes.  Darwinism was their Jurisprudence, though the
scholars of the day preferred to call it Legal Realism.

.    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said in 1881, "Law is what the courts
do in fact", and by that sweeping sentence he condemned the heritage
of Faith that was this nation's birthright.

.    Indeed, some professors still insist, "Law is whatever nine men
say it is."  This statement reflects a lack of Jurisprudence.  It is
an untenable and fearful excuse for legal philosophy just as legal
realism was a counterfeit for Jurisprudence.  Legal realism did not
survive simply because it had no principles to sustain it.  Even if,
in their restricted sense, the law were only what our judges said it
is, we wanted more.  We wanted our judges to follow rules and to
establish justice based upon some sort of fixed plan.  That judges
could rule without a plan was somehow un-American.

.    And so a plan was offered, accepted, and is now the rule for a
growing number of our highest courts to follow.  The new plan is
social engineering.  Its rules are the theories of social science. 
Its methods are mass propaganda and statistics.  Its goals are the
objectives of a secular religion called humanism.  This, then, is the
idea that has the world in its grip: God is dead, so man must set the
standards without interference from mere deity.

.    And so our nation follows after fools who have no God - but fools
who do have principles.  They are the principles of humanism which
have insidiously infected our modern age, so-called.  These humanists
are quite real, whatever editorialists may argue.  They are as real as
Nazis and Bolsheviks - and quite possibly ten times more dangerous. 
They have both a plan and principles.  Their plan is the creation of a
purely atheistic society to be in place and established by the end of
this century.  Their society will be guided by principles of communal
ownership of property.  The quest for "the good life is [their]
central task".  And many are the men and women who support their
stance and their objectives.

.    Social science is the sum of their jurisprudence.  Statistics is
the basis of their morality.  And, a new world order run by the
atheists is their stated objective.  This is not presumption!

.    In 1933, the humanists published their first manifesto.  Some of
its statements follow [paraphrased from the 1933 text], and you are
invited to read the original to test my abridgment.

 1. The universe is self-existing and not created.
 2. Man is the product of evolution.
 3. Man has no soul, and consciousness dies with the body.
 4. Culture and civilization are products of evolution.
 5. There is no God nor any cosmic guarantee of human values.
 6. Goals based on eternal values are obsolete.
 7. Man must be his own god.
 8. The only rule of life is to live it to the fullest.
 9. The only goal is self fulfillment.
 10. Spiritual life will not be allowed.
 11. Sentiment, hopes and wishful thinking will be disallowed.
 12. The purpose of creativity is satisfaction.
 13. Religions shall be reconstituted as quickly as possible.
 14. Socialist communism shall replace acquisitive capitalism.

.    In 1973, the second manifesto revealed the humanist plan for one
world government, dedicated to atheism.  A few points touched upon in
that document follow [paraphrased from the 1973 text], and again you
may read the original to test my version.

 1. False hopes of heaven are harmful.
 2. Reasonable minds look to other methods of survival.
 3. The 21st Century should be the humanistic century.
 4. Humanism intends a secular society on a planetary scale.
 5. There is no divine purpose for the human species.
 6. Religion is an obstacle to human progress.
 7. Ethics is autonomous and situational.
 8. Abortion and divorce are human rights.
 9. Sexual and homosexual exploration are human rights.
 10. Euthanasia and suicide are human rights.
 11. The limits of national sovereignty must be transcended.
 12. A transnational federal government should be established.

.    No high and holy wisdom based on God's Eternal Principles of
Justice shall be permitted in this grand utopia these evil fools
envision.

.    You see, Jurisprudence is forgotten indeed.  In its place are
legal mechanisms, public policies, and a promise of the good life for
all who will agree.  Human hopes that there might be, after all, a God
with an Eternal Law of Love and Truth to guide and to ennoble our
lives has been condemned as heresy by the humanists.

Their New Age has been ushered in and is already in place.

.    Indeed, the farther we peer into the future, the less we see of
Jurisprudence.  And, moreover, since our classroom secularists insist
that we refrain from all divine considerations when we speak of law,
there is no longer room for Jurisprudence.  The few who still believe
in God are hiding in their churches, hoping for the best, watching the
growth of a new religion that threatens to displace not only
Christianity but all philosophies that teach Eternal Truth, a movement
that will not retreat one single inch.

                               CHOICES

.    Perhaps you now see why we hear so much about "human rights" and
the liberality of Roe v. Wade.

.    Jurisprudence indeed!  We have none!  Our generation is being led
by the nose to a New Tomorrow we may not find to our liking!  We are
trying to be fair and liberal, but we are neither just nor prudent -
and the price for our foolishness has not yet been counted!  The
scholars of this age are like deceitful land barons who wander about
concealing or uprooting ancient landmarks.  It is as if our heritage
and every noble thought of our forefathers had been rendered
foolishness by the unchallenged edict of Twentieth Century scholarship
and humanistic atheism.

.    These scholars are so completely lost in their conceit as to
propose that they can redefine reality and so, with words, cause it to
bend to every desire of their imaginations.  They seek to replace the
meaning of Jurisprudence with the measurements of social science or
the vanity of their personal philosophies.  You are witness to these
stealthily emerging ideas that threaten to destroy the fabric of
civilization and cast you and your children headlong into the terrors
of an intolerable anarchy where rule is force alone and justice is
survival.

At issue is nothing more or less than The Truth.

                              CONCLUSION

.    This essay is too short to touch on the modernists' concern for
equity to underdogs, distribution of wealth to the poor, or
compensation for injuries resulting from the plaintiff's own
stupidity.  Instead it has addressed a topic I believe is even more
important than these more popular issues.  I have attempted to
identify the very foundation upon which rest our root concepts of
equity, economic liberty, and juridical fairness.  If I have not
provided many answers, I can trust that I have proffered many
questions, and I will hope you may be encouraged to be sensitive to
the possibility of any answers that my questions raise.

.    A mighty beam suspends the pans of justice!  A razors edge is its
fulcrum!  But, who can fathom the depths of that foundation on which
the fulcrum rests or guess at the burden of its judgments?

Tennyson wrote:

.    Our little systems have their day;
.    They have their day and cease to be:
.    They are but broken lights of thee,
.    And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

.    Scholars balk at our mere mention of The Lord.  Many actually
insist we have no right to speak of Deity at law school or in any
other school, for that matter.  Some inner sense informs them we have
somehow violated an unwriten rule.  The very idea!  Who does this
fellow think he is to bring God into our deliberations?  To those who
are offended or incensed that some of us may on occasion speak of God,
I ask only that they pause a moment to ask, "Why not?"  Is it because
we have somehow tacitly agreed not to speak of God in public?  And, if
we have agreed, pray tell me when and where did we agree?

.    Our most prestigious law schools were founded by educators
devoted to the ideas and ideals of a government guided by prayer and
her people's faith in eternal principles of right and wrong.  Harvard,
Yale, and dozens of others were built and staffed in their early years
by Christian men who taught Christian values.  Today, quite the
opposite is the rule.  "God has no place in our discussions of
contracts or torts," we are told.  Our most notable Americans,
including General Washington and Lincoln, were staunch believers who
leaped at every opportunity to praise Providence and acknowledge their
Almighty God, The Lord High Judge, Prince of Peace, King of Kings. 
Yet we conceit ourselves as being wiser than these men, and we confine
our general debates to secular parameters as if God has no place in
classrooms and courthouses.

.    And we are not surprised the old meaning of Jurisprudence is
lost.  Today's usage is so foreign to its original meaning, so
divested of its lofty purpose and its noble goal, it has become a mere
non sequitur.  To some it is another name for law.  To others it is a
special branch of social science.  And a few insist it is an arcane
discipline between the abstrusities of social ethics and that maze men
call epistemology.

.    We are only vaguely aware of its true value and greatness or the
power and success that could be ours if we would resurrect it from its
holy tomb.  The best has been left out.  Modern thinkers have
selectively defined the term to eliminate its deeper meaning and so
obscure it with their modern, atheistic substitute.

.    The ancients venerated words and used them to contemplate deeper
truths than we have time for in this hectic rat race world of ours.
Through words they searched for verities, for things eternal, for
destiny ordained by God... for the welfare of both men and nations.
We're far too practical for that.  We're far too busy - too
sophisticated to concern ourselves with metaphors and legends.  We are
the liberated generation, hastening to cross the wide uncharted sea of
the future, guided only by science and social pressures, heedless of
the past, seeking the profit of today, and certain we can conquer
every foe with good intentions and a new, God-free enlightenment.

The ancients knew better.

.    They rested safely on the past, peered cautiously into the
future, and labored resolutely with concern for us who are their
posterity.  Some of them knew we wouldn't understand their vision. 
Many predicted our refusal to rely on the landmarks of their wise
architecture.  They wrote to us and warn us even now from silent books
discarded by librarians who daily clear the stacks to make room for
the newer "truth" of humanistic philosophies.

.    Orwell predicted our important words would be displaced by
newspeak and newthink.  Well we may wonder, by the year 2050, where
will truth be?  Where justice?  Where liberty?

.    Jurisprudence has been called the "queen of reason".  As the
torch held up by Lady Liberty in New York's harbor, Jurisprudence
lights our search for Truth.  It is the Code by which we ought to
codify our laws. It is not law itself, nor is it a body of laws or the
science or study of laws.  It is a spirit.

.    Our adopted Jurisprudence, strong or weak, good or selfishly
evil, is the flag by which our enemies identify us and by which our
friends come willingly to aid us in our struggles.  Without a
Jurisprudence, we are barbarians who go to war, we are criminals who
try our neighbors at the bar.  And, we are wiser with a faulty
Jurisprudence than with none at all.

The ancients recognized three Graces and four Virtues.

.    The Graces are Faith, Hope, and Charity (also called Wisdom,
Strength, and Beauty).  These are the cornerstones of Liberty.  On no
stronger foundation can any people establish and maintain a lawful
government.  Make a breach in one, and all is lost.

.    The four Virtues are Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and
Fortitude.  These are the tools that keep the structure of Liberty
from collapsing from fatigue and the attacks of error.  There are no
substitutes.  Either we labor with these tools, or the complex
architecture of Civilization will crumble into ruin and decay.

.    The Virtues must abide together.  Prudence and Justice must work
hand in hand with the restraint that is Temperance and the strength
and courage that is Fortitude.  They are all counterfeits when
separated.

.    And yet these simple truths are threatened by a very great
ignorance, an ignorance that is being cultivated in the minds of our
intelligent and energetic youth who seek the leadership of us and our
children.  They are discarding the wisdom of their heritage,
supplanting caution and good sense with hasty actions justified solely
by good intentions.  In no place is this great ignorance more clearly
seen than in our law schools where tomorrow's leaders are being taught
the foolish "wisdoms" of today - bereft of that eternal light our
forebears once called Jurisprudence.

.    The ancients would laugh at us - were it not for the plight of
the weak and defenseless who suffer from our conceited errors.

.    We are foolish without Faith.  We are weak without Hope.  We are
ugly without Love and true Charity.

.    We are mad without Temperance.  We are ineffective without
Fortitude.  We are cruel without Justice.  We are precipitous without
Prudence.  We are damned without God.


Bibliography

1 The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom, Simon & Schuster, New
York.

2 Ibid.

3 Jurisprudence, Sir John Salmond, Sweet and Maxwell, London, 1920.

4 Ibid.

5 The American Jurisprudence Reader, Thomas A. Cowan, Oceana
Publications, New York, 1956.

6 The Crisis of Civilization, J. Cape, London, 1941.

7 The Spirit of The Laws, Baron de Montesquieu, edited by Thomas
Nugent, Hafner Publishing Company, New York, 1949.

8 Ibid.

9 Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford Press, Oxford, 1982

10 Ibid.

11 A Treasury of Masonic Thought, edited by Carl Glick, Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, New York, 1953.

12 Proverbs 4:7.

13 Proverbs 9:10.

14 Study of Law, Blackstone, 1809.

15 Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam Smith, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1978.

16 Jurisprudence, Francis LeBuffe and James Hayes, Fordham University
Press, New York, 1938.

17 Jurisprudence, R.W.M. Dias and G.B.J. Hughes, Butterworth &
Company, London, 1957.

18 1984, George Orwell.

19 The Struggle of Law, Rudolph von Ihering, Callaghan and Company,
Chicago, 1879.


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