14. Constitutional Scholasticism
American law students are trained to accept "that the proper method of knowing involve[s] syllogistic demonstration – deduction from universal first principles or premises taken to have self-evidential status." The first principles of constitutional adjudication are set forth in the Constitution itself, of course, but the premises from which most lawyers work are set out in judicial opinions -- from the Supreme Court, first of all.
The Supreme Court's premises have self-evidential status because they are enforced. The Court can overturn any lower court that defies it. That doesn't stop lower court judges from trying (see item 11), but it explains why they try to disguise what they're doing. By and large, the assumption on which American lawyers work is that "the Constitution" and "rulings of the Supreme Court" are synonymous terms.
The quotation with which I began this post is from David C. Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, a book that explains everything you need to know about the origins of the intellectual techniques American law students spend three years mastering.
Joel Jacobsen
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