Our newspaper related the facts. A Big Island farmer, 43 years old, a pillar in his community, an activist in behalf of efforts to combat the coffee berry borer, married to an American woman, father of three, a regular payer of income and property taxes, faces deportation because, at age 15, he crossed the border from Mexico without permission and stayed. Proceedings against him began in 2010 but he was granted a stay in 2014.
His community is outraged that his upstanding behavior on their behalf counts for nothing.
What a great example of the tension between the letter and the spirit of the law!
A lot of great literature has evolved from this tension. Start with the Christian Bible as Exhibit A. Billy Budd and Jean Valjean, to name just two, are widely known literary manifestations of this archetypal conflict.
It is easy to have sympathy for both sides. “We are a government of laws, not of men” is an oft-heard proclamation about our nation, standing in stark contrast to countries where law is changeable, depending upon one’s relationship with the government.
There is also the view of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote, “The life of the law is not logic but experience,” in commenting on what he viewed as the unjust, though legally prescribed, sentence of a young offender. Shakespeare had an opinion, too: “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
My Dad, the preacher, used to categorize people to me as “Old Testament” or “New Testament.” I asked him what he meant. He said that the Old Testament was about setting basic conditions for a clan of people and was quite explicit about do’s and don’ts, especially the don’ts. Rules were set—about food, dress, behavior—that helped to mould the people into a community of the faithful.
Following the literal, physical law was the price of belonging.
In the New Testament, Jesus changes things. When challenged, Jesus did not select one of Moses’ ten commandments as the greatest. He came up with a new one about loving God and one’s neighbors, one that would subsume the others.
He said that following spiritual law was supreme. Love replaced obedience as the primary test of faithfulness. So, what happens when love and obedience are in conflict?
Herman Melville and Victor Hugo wrote novels that end with different resolutions to the tension between the letter and the spirit of the law. Billy Budd, a person without blemish, is unjustly accused by John Claggart, the ship’s master-at-arms, of conspiracy to mutiny. There is reason to believe that Claggart has acted out of envy; many see him as a man of “natural depravity.” Billy Budd stutters. When confronted by the accusation, he cannot get out the words he wants, and, in frustration, he strikes Claggart a fatal blow.
Everyone on board, including the captain, believes Budd to be morally justified. But, the captain is concerned about keeping order on the ship, and the law calls for any blow, fatal or otherwise, to be punishable by death. So, Billy Budd is hanged.
Jean Valjean served a twenty-year prison sentence for theft, despite the fact that he had stolen bread to keep his family alive. When he is released, the law requires him to carry his parole papers on him at all times which Valjean knows will condemn him to a life of poverty. Who would hire a convict?
He discards the papers, creates a new life for himself, becomes Mayor, serves others, fathers a beautiful daughter; in short, he reforms and lives a productive life.
His unmasking even is the result of an act of kindness that leads his jailer, Jauvert, to find him out. And so the contest between the man of the law, Jauvert, who has lived a blameless life as servant of the law, and Valjean, who has served an unjust sentence but tossed aside his parole papers while becoming an exemplar of virtue, begins.
Jauvert comes to realize that Valjean is beloved by all who know him. That drives Jauvert to madness, and he commits suicide to escape what, for him, was a world turned upside down.
People of a Certain Age, we are all at some point along the continuum between the two poles: “The law is the law. If you do not like the law, change it.” And “The life of the law is not logic but experience.”
As the Big Island deportation case illustrates, this tension is nothing abstract. Nor does it lend itself to a right answer in the same way all of the time.
There are four words over the entrance to the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. “Equal Justice Under Law.” It is justice that can mitigate the stark contrasts. “Do justly,” commands the prophet Micah and, we could surmise, those who built the building.
What is just, one well might ask?
Therein lies the question that must be answered by all of us. In sharing our answers and acting upon them, we may find a path that allows us to be a nation of laws that uses experience to breathe life into the law.
Daniel E. White
July 15, 2017