All the Law and the Prophets: The Legal Imagination as Prophetic Imagination

Abstract

Legal speech and prophetic speech are commonly configured as diametrically opposed to each other. A lawyer stands graceful and impeccably groomed, calmly proffering measured arguments. A prophet stands unkempt and askew, spewing wild denunciations. Prophets hotly condemn the law and the legal system, while lawyers coldly dismiss prophetic accusations as unhinged and impractical. This view of the respective roles of law and prophetic discourse is entrenched in Anglo-American social criticism. The great nineteenth-century British critic Matthew Arnold distinguished between the rhetorical styles of Hellenism and Hebraism, the language of “sweetness and light” and the language of “fire and strength,” respectively.1 The former is the objective and precise language of rational analysis, the language of the courtroom; the latter is the ardent articulation of protest and resistance, the language of the soapbox.