Blue Laws and Beyond


When I was rebinding my casebooks I didn't pay much attention to the colors I chose for the new covers. Perhaps I should have.

I realized yetserday that my experience of law is synaesthetic; I experience it as a jumble of shapes and colors. My torts book is blue; so are torts themselves. The exact shade varies with the kind; strict liability cases are a deep blue, almost navy, but contributory negligence is a pale sky blue.

Here in this hotbed of theory, it's common talk about how the choice of legal rules can completely change the way we look at a problem. But I see these choices in vivid color: a wave of yellow one one side and a wave of green on the other, surging over each other and swirling about. Underneath it all runs a spider-web of grey-black procedural rules which occasionally flash bright red.

It's profoundly beautiful, but I'm not sure whether it signifies anything other than a lack of sleep.