Abstract

James Boyd White in Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the explains one of his uses of the term rhetoric, of which, he contends, the language of law is species (33): A judge's or lawyer's language, he notes, is argumentatively constitutive of the language it employs; such language is not only instrumental in arguing but announces, in effect, Here in this language is the way this and similar cases should be talked (34). Legal professionals thus shape language behavior; the dynamics of such processes and similar ones are the objects of White's attention and analysis in the several studies included in Heracles' Bow and in When Words Lose Their Meaning. White's analyses of the rhetorical nature of the law embody detailed suggestions which, if realized, could work positive influences. He frequently makes statements like the following: Law should take as its most central question what kind of we should be, with what values, motives, and aims (42). Indeed, in White's thinking, law and rhetoric are to be seen as linked in broad shaping process, one which promises to build a of certain sort, set of shared relations, attitudes, and meanings. To view law as rhetoric might enable us to attend to the spiritual or meaningful side of our collective life (42-43). The points made by White in his essays embody praiseworthy aims; in the present essay, I will illuminate one type of aim in exploring White's claims concerning law and rhetoric operating in communities of certain sort, those of the U. S. Constitution. When Words Lose Their Meaning presents the legal and epistemological basis for the communities of the Constitution in reading of Justice John Marshall's Supreme Court decision of McCulloch v. Maryland. This decision, White contends, activated the inert Constitution of the United States and, in effect, exercised reconstitution of culture and community (247). The issues he treats are complex and of interest to rhetoricians. The discussion here will emphasize U. S. Constitution that establishes variety of communities engaged in rhetorical practices. The variety occurs along with number of benefits, because the Constitution's communicants are invited to act in most cases while free of specifications and directives. Such an invitation leaves room for communicator to consider specific circumstances, to engage in the activity Aristotle designated in terms of blank paradigm, that is, to find the available means of persuasion in given case (7). White in his confrontation of several paradoxical issues suggested by McCulloch v. Maryland raises the sorts of questions which he asks in his other essays, questions about communities and the nature of the texts with which they are associated. He is interested in the boundaries, strengths and limitations of the Constitution and of the nature of its rhetorical communities.