Beever on the value of law as an object of contemplation

This past summer, Marc DeGirolami linked to Allan Beever's The Declaratory Theory of Law. I recently had occasion to read another piece by Professor Beever: Formalism in Music and Law. The concluding section touched a chord, so to speak, such that I thought I would pass it along to MOJ readers. Here's a bit:

Of course, music has its functions. Its most significant function is to give pleasure to listeners. But its ability to do this would be almost entirely eliminated were listeners to attend to its function rather than its form. The final movement of Mozart’s Symphony no 41 in C Major, K 551 contains the most breath-taking combination of sonata form and fugue. This astonishing achievement can afford us enormous pleasure. But a ‘listener’ who focused on her own pleasure would fail to hear it and would in all likelihood be bored. Music is cognitive. It does not work like drugs and its effect on us is not the same as its effect on cows (apparently, cows produce more milk when they are played classical music).

Of course, no such argument can be constructed for law. The law is not justified as an object of contemplation. But there remains an illuminating analogy here. Part, only a small part, of the value of law flows from its being an object of contemplation. In a very similar way to music, it enriches the lives of many lawyers. Do we not sometimes revel in the law’s intricacies and delight in its complexities? Is it not true that much of the pleasure of studying the law comes from such? Can we not describe law as, in some way, beautiful? If that sounds just too outlandish, it is worth remembering that many mathematicians swear that mathematics is beautiful and frequently compare it to Bach’s music. If mathematics can be beautiful, surely anything can be. These questions are not rhetorical. Those who hold that legal categories are a mere smokescreen for policy must answer them in the negative. For them, the canvas of the law is really a window to be seen though. They appreciate law as the owners of cows appreciate music (‘Yay, more milk. Isn’t Mozart great?’).

***

*** What does contemplation of the law reveal? The law, of course. But that is not all. When we treat it as an object of contemplation in its own right and not as a window to be seen though, it also reveals justice. And we are in desperate need of this. *** [W]e are so powerfully affected by functionalism that many of us cannot see the world beyond it. It is no surprise, then, that many want to look through the law to its alleged functions. But just as contemplation of art can change the way that we see the world, so can contemplation of the law. It is often rightly said that wheat fields never look the same after one has seen van Gogh’s paintings of wheat fields; and, to one captured by functionalism, the world will never look the same again after attending to the law. That contemplation is possibly the most powerful experience of justice as a pervasive phenomenon that it is possible to have.