Osler's Razor

I am spending this week finishing a new law review article, and am loving the chance to delve into something that makes my mind race. Part of it examines clemency themes in Shakespeare's plays. I know that seems esoteric, but many of the Founding Fathers actually were huge Shakespeare fans-- Jefferson and Adams took a BFF trip to the Bard's boyhood home at Stratford-on-Avon, and Washington attended a performance of The Tempest during the Constitutional Convention. It goes to my central point, which is that the framers intended the pardon power to be an expression of the president's individual nature. It is the soul part of the Constitution, as much of the heart as the mind.

If nothing else, I found moments of great meaning. Measure for Measure, it turns out, is largely about the tension between justice and mercy, and the same theme crops up again and again in his other plays. Here are two passages I really loved.

First, from The Merchant of Venice:


--> The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of Kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 
When mercy seasons justice.
I love that line-- that clemency is "enthroned in the hearts of kings."

And then there is my favorite, near the end of The Tempest (after Prospero, speaking here, has resolved to free the captives of his magic and spare their lives):


--> Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury 
Do I take part: the rare action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:
My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, 
And they shall be themselves.
That last line just nails it: that a principled grant of mercy, clemency, can make someone whole, to be themselves as they should be and can be.

How lucky am I , that this is my work?