By Clarence Felix Nyiri
Clarence Nyiri will be graduating from Albany Law School in December of this year. Before attending Albany Law, he received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Marist College.
Clarence spends most of his free time as the frontman and lead writer for the internationally acclaimed alternative rock band “The Dissidents.” He also works as an independent novelist and screenwriter and is involved in a music-centered AI startup known as “Haven Music.”
Currently, Clarence is in the process of drafting a thesis that links foundational legal and moral values to necessary constants and synchronous systems within the fields of psychology, physics, and neuroscience.
Does the law have a shadow?
Among the most significant intellectual thinkers of the Western canon is Friedrich Nietzsche, whose works have offered a rounded and nuanced explanation for how people process their environment through gradually changing moral prisms. Carl Jung, a student and successor of Nietzsche, made great strides in applying the concepts inherent in Nietzsche’s teachings to the archetypal foundations of the human psyche. Jung’s career and contributions have greatly enhanced mankind’s understanding of how psychology relates to human interaction with reality, making him a highly respected figure in the field.
Central to the teachings of both thinkers is the idea that the creation of a psychologically balanced system of beliefs and morals relies on a process of gradual change through introspection, the confrontation of fears, and the integration of the ideologically opposite “shadow” complex with the conscious persona which governs our day-to-day operations.
In this paper, the ideal role of judges is examined and redefined through this method of thinking. A new “ideal judge” is posited which rivals the “Judge Hercules” proposed by Ronald Dworkin. In lieu of a judge with the absolute mental command of legal precedent and tradition of the United States, an alternative is proposed which seeks to balance the judicial self-interests inherent in legal realism, the moral archetypes which would not be out of place in a natural law conception, and their application to community interactions as would be seen in a positivist perspective.
In this paper, the ideal role of judges is examined and redefined through this method of thinking. A new “ideal judge” is posited which rivals the “Judge Hercules” proposed by Ronald Dworkin. In lieu of a judge with the absolute mental command of legal precedent and tradition of the United States, an alternative is proposed which seeks to balance the judicial self-interests inherent in legal realism, the moral archetypes which would not be out of place in a natural law conception, and their application to community interactions as would be seen in a positivist perspective.
Through a case study of the history of the incorporation doctrine; the application of the Bill of Rights to the states, a legal parallel is made to the processes of Nietzsche and Jung. An argument is presented that incorporation is an apt representation of American Jurisprudence confronting the essential dominant and suppressed elements of its legal “psyche,” and that effective and moral law is the byproduct of this union.
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To read the paper, open HERE.
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To read the paper, open HERE.
