Per saltum

It has finally arrived. Justice Cardozo's 'The Paradoxes of Legal Science', published in 1928. Interesting that just as we struggle with the chaotic, convulsive evolution of law, he was doing the same thing, renowned jurist that he was.

He contrasts the rules of law with those of bridge building. One can build a bridge using the rules of engineering and math, and know that it will support the weight it was made to hold, and feel confident in the task completed. However, the law is made of fits and starts, sidetracks, errors and corrections and he compares it to radiation, which had previously been thought to flow in a continuous manner. (this was written circa 1928). He posits that perhaps all matter and process is really a series of fits and starts in a micro view, and only appears to be a smooth flowing mass viewed from a distance of space or time. In latin, this is known as per saltum-by leaps, or fits and starts.

"We must preserve to justice its universal quality, and yet leave to it the capacity to be individual and particular". Justice for one and justice for all. Mighty words and heady concepts, and I aspire to them. But how to obtain justice for the one who is harmed, when to grant them justice is to harm the whole body of persons?

And so I too proceed in my pursuit of wisdom and knowing. I move in fits and starts, sometimes seeming to lose ground, or to plateau, and then suddenly to see and know some great insight. I remember standing in a parking lot talking with my brother Clay after a class, and realizing that all of us have addictions and follies that tend to direct our lives in spite of our best efforts. For some that is the call of drugs or alcohol, but for some it is the ego, or drive for attention, to be the best in the room, or the inability to stop eating. We each have our demons, and some battles to overcome them seem lost for a time. But if we persist, one day we look up and realize we've moved the flag.