text on jurisprudence referring to a “postmodernist thought” as an oxymoron
is a forceful way of expressing disdain for it. Unfortunately, disdain is a
weapon of polemics not intellectual analysis. On the lighter side, to describe a
person as a “poet in residence in absentia” blends humour with a bohemian
tag. On the heavier side, according to the boxing champion Jack Dempsey, a
champion is someone who gets up when he cannot.
Paradox can
be used to great literary and polemic effect. An example comes
from an article where a journalist Paul Sheehan commented: “As of now the
Liberal Party is not a political movement or a political philosophy but, apart
from a band of idealists, a collective of opportunists masquerading as a
cause”. In the next sentence he sprang the paradox: “The deeper you go, the
less you find”.
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Comparison
Comparison can be made by a metaphor or a simile. A simile specifically says
that one thing is like another. In Hamlet, Horatio uses a legal simile to describe
the sudden exit of the ghost of Hamlet’s father: “It started like a guilty thing /
Upon a fearful summons”.
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A metaphor, by contrast does not specify the likeness. Instead it describes
one concept in terms of another. Metaphors are similar to analogy in that they
involve seeking a likeness between two items. Analogy, however, functions on
the basis that the two items are like enough to form part of the same category
that is subject to legal regulation. Like cases should be treated alike is the
relevant catchphrase. By contrast a metaphor reveals how two things that are
not alike in most ways are similar in one important way.
In other words, it
directly connects seemingly unrelated subjects. Yet the limited scope of
the
likeness is the strength of the metaphor. Because the subjects are otherwise
different, the metaphor highlights and thus emphasises the point of
comparison. This is why a metaphor is stronger on impact than on strict
reasoning. And this is how it derives its literary strength – the likeness stands
out.
Like any discipline law has its own metaphors. “Blind justice” is a major one.
Justice is blind because it does not judge litigants on how they look but on the
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Paul Sheehan The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 September 2009.
There is an anecdote of a lecturer who commented on a student
assignment as he urged the student to improve their structure that the
assignment was constituted by “non sequitur following non sequitur”. This
has a paradoxical ring as well as a bilingual play on words, given that non
sequitur translates literally “it does not follow”.
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William Shakespeare Hamlet Act 1 Scene 1
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