Monday morning thoughts by Stephen L. Hall.
An issue recently appeared in a conversation regarding an important legal principle which I have noticed recently has further reach into understanding societies around that world that I had previously conceived.
The definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supersede of supersede is
1 a : to cause to be set aside
b : to force out of use as inferior
2 : to take the place or position of
3 : to displace in favor of another.
(“Supercede has occurred as a spelling variant of supersede since the 17th century, and it is common in current published writing. It continues, however, to be widely regarded as an error.” Id.)
All of which work reasonably interchangeably; it is the leal principle of replacement or rather displacement.
A law which is enacted later in time supersedes an older law. Legal language which is more specific supersedes a more general language.
It is generally assumed that laws from a higher level of government supersede those from a lower level under Article VI of the US Constitution, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
However, this Supremacy Clause, relates to federal jurisdiction over federal issues and treaties, not the principle of superseding. Federal law does not supersede state law so much as preempts such laws only to the extent that the Constitution grants such powers to the federal government and not the states.
Supremacy is not my concern at the present moment, rather it is the superseding of laws or ideas which is the topic at hand.
Superseding, as a legal principle, is the government’s way of saying, “Oops, we screwed up” or sometimes just “Oops, we changed our mind.”
It happens that later generations rethink a particular provision, with the added benefit of experience and hindsight, thus deciding that thing aren’t working out quite as planned and it is time to change the process or the principle.
Understand that while latter always supersedes the former, it is not necessarily an improvement; sometimes it is just the hubris of thinking we now know better than them, though sometimes it could be more sinister.
This is the case with Amendments to the Constitution, because we amend the Constitution rather than rewriting it the way we do with mere legislation and regulation, the original language remains but gets superseded by the later Amendment. This is the case in a number of instances, such as the election of Senators under the 17th Amendment.
More often, however, it is a case where the laws have become so complex and convoluted with the continuing passage of new laws without the repeal or refinement of old laws that the lawmakers themselves do not know what the law is or even that they are creating a conflict.
When the court is confronted with two laws which conflict, they are put in the uncomfortable position of having to reconcile the state’s screw up. Of course, it would be beneath their “dignity” to say “Oops, we made an error, sorry about that.” Rather, they developed principles like “superseding” as a way to never having to say, “we were wrong.”
So this law was passed more recently, or this law is more specific, becomes the state’s way of saying that you the citizen should have understood this law is the one which is important and should have followed it. Of course, if it was the state following the older law those state employees are thus immunized from liability because they were acting on the “reasonable belief” that the law was the previous version.
All of this results from the other legal maxim that, “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, a rather blatant misquote of Thomas Hobbes, as a way of saying the state is going to hold you responsible for knowing the law which the lawyers, judges, and legislators of the state don’t even know fully themselves.
(For those who are interested, the actual quote from Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, was, “Because ignorance of the law is no good excuse where one is bound to take notice of the laws to which one is subject.” In legal terms he referred not to mere ignorance but only to wilful ignorance, and a few pages later states that a stranger who was unaware of the local ordinance would not be held accountable until he was made aware of the law.)
So what does this have to do with other aspects of society I hear you ask? (Okay, I may just be hearing voices, but I will address that as if you had actually asked.)
We accept that people are fallible, and will from time to time err in writing legal discourse and principles and that the process of law changes and becomes more refined as we, theoretically at least, gain a greater understanding of legal principles.
Superseding in religion goes by another name: abrogation.
It goes by another name in religion because the very concept of religion requires two things not present in law and legislatures: 1) that the religion is a divine revelation to man; and 2) that the deity revealing such is both immortal and unchanging.
To change divine law, there must be a divine revelation countermanding the prior commandments. One thinks of the Ten Commandments, but there are over 600 divine laws in the book of laws, Leviticus. (Levites being the Jewish priest clan.)
Many of these divine laws include the idea that eating shellfish such as shrimp and lobster is an abomination, as is eating the flesh of an animal with a cloven hoof, such as swine. Bacon and shrimp are abominations . . . very tasty abominations.
There is a vision by the Apostle Paul where such unclean animals descend from Heaven and Paul is instructed to eat of the unclean animals by a divine voice. After he refuses the commands of Heaven more than once, he is told that what God has made clean cannot be then unclean.
Now that vision is taken as a symbolic sign that Christianity is not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles and other peoples as well. However, it was also taken by the Romans and Greeks that the dietary restrictions of Leviticus no longer held sway, that they had by divine revelation been abrogated. Thus, they could eat bacon and shrimp and still be Christian.
The very concept of Christianity itself, that the Christ was the ultimate blood sacrifice for sin, the Paschal Lamb of God, is the basis for abrogating the need to continue the ancient rites of animal, and sometimes human, blood sacrifices upon the altars as commanded in the Torah. Ancient religions, whether pagan or monotheistic, all practiced blood sacrifices.
When it comes to Islam, the propagandists, like CAIR, will point to the verses in the Quran which talk about peaceful aspects of Islam such as there being no compulsion in religion. However, all of the peaceful passages in the Quran occur in the early days of Islam when Mohammad was living in Medina.
He later moved to Mecca, and the passages of the Quran took on a decidedly violent, aggressive and war-like tone as Islam became a warrior cult, and as a result started to grow and expand. Without this change in perspective, Islam would never have been more than one of a thousand minor short-lived cults.
True to the principles of abrogation, the later verses in time trump the earlier passages, so those propagandists simply lie about the violence in Islam. But not just the violence is abrogated by the divine revelations, but often the divine revelations conveniently reflected what Mohammad wanted and desired.
For those unfamiliar, the idea behind the Quran was that it was told to Mohammad sitting alone in a cave by the angel Gabriel then revealed to his followers. Since Mohammad could neither read nor write, the Quran was assembled by his followers after his death from what they remembered and had written down.
Which brings us back to the original observation that much of what religion teaches, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are abrogations of previous divine revelations.
Now a rational person can accept that religious texts are man’s attempt to understand the divine, and being merely human, sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes things are inserted which are not divine revelation but dogmatic practices which favor the writers.
The Bible and Torah, for instance, include a mixture of history, secular law, and religion, as such it is not generally taken to be entirely divine. The Quran, in contrast, is set to be entirely divine revelation.
Personally, I distrust revelation or visions because you can never be certain that they are true, even if I saw the visions myself. I trust reason and the faculties of the mind, the gateway to the divine is in the tools we have been given. Whether law or religion, superseding and abrogating are just ways of saying that we still haven’t got it all correct.
That’s okay. Life is discovery. What fun would reason be if the answers were simply revealed and we could not argue about them?
