Sometimes many good and valuable things happen at once… Last week we had a chance to listen to two talks which ought to be reflected upon further…
Have you ever thought that milk has something to do with law? Perhaps not immediately but surely, if you would dwell on ‘thinking through commodities’ you would see, as Dr Yoriko Otomo rightly pointed out, that legal life of milk has a long history and an important political and socio-economic place in the society. From the domestic it has been ‘forcefully’ translated into the commercial, a public sphere, where it has gained social power telling the society as a whole what a good mother is. Its standardisation created environmental problems, the relationship between the animal and the human changed and the cow became just an object. Advertising targeted at women and children, while painting a picture of community and humanity, ironically turns them into loyal subjects to an ideological system focused on money and the individual. Can in this case milk be seen as a medium for control of public conduct through legal method (among others)? If so, then control by whom? Indeed, it is an intriguing question, wanting to be answered.
A broader interrogation of this was brought to light and relevance again in the lifelong study about the Law of Nations by Professor Martti Koskenniemi*. He exposed the fact that it was always left a lot for humans themselves to decide… Scholastics of the School of Salamanca in the sixteen century were trying to get the attention of the ‘prince’s ear’ by creating and recreating the notions of sovereignty, property and power.
They inquired then what to do with the world that ‘suddenly’ seemed so far departed from the world in the Bible. ‘What is ‘jus’; what is this right?’ they would ask… An objective word of virtue or moral quality? What is just? Can war be just? Scholars tried to differentiate between legal and non-legal right. Knowingly on unaware they were constructing a dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them’ yet putting the two under the umbrella of universality. Moreover, what do we do with our rational self-interest, coupled with the ability of superb negotiations – is this all we want to be? Ought to be? Indeed, language of power is powerful, even though it differs, constantly battles for attention and depends on where it is used: in theology, economy, politics, law… Who controls whom? again comes to mind. And also, are legal idioms, the language of the law, only used to describe political power?
Just as scholastics ‘created’ a society for themselves on the basis of natural law, artificial sociability (Puffendorf and Adam Smith’s idea that we want to love each other, are weak and entrusted with reason), and pulled it together with the vocabulary borrowed from the Bible, Aristotle and others, so can we. But, can we take vocabulary we use today as a measuring standard for what happened decades or centuries ago or the other way around? We need to keep in mind that we are constantly (re)creating ‘a kind’ of a society but it is not necessary clearly visible why and when certain crucial moments in history (will) happen. This indeed, in the words of Koskenniemi, in many ways involves the legal imaginary.
Lectures like this, at Kent Law School, through CECIL and the Centre for Critical Thought, are among those not to be missed.
It is lectures like this that satisfy an inquisitive mind and leave it wanting more. Would you agree?