It is the general goal of this column to showcase specific areas of language study featured in our Latin, French, and Spanish classrooms so that parents gain insight into the richness of student learning there. This month’s piece shines a spotlight on terms and concepts in Latin that shaped the workings of the modern law. Without too much of a history lesson, an encyclopedic collection of Roman legal writings known as the Code of Justinian had a conspicuous effect on the development of civil and international law through the Middle Ages long after the Western Roman Empire’s collapse. Moreover, as Latin remained for many more centuries the common language of the mediaeval Europe’s polyglot elite, law and legal principles continued to be developed, expressed, and circulated in Latin.
Latin students encounter and learn to use a good variety of such Latin phrases as their vocabulary, grammar, and the curriculum permit.Some examples are: in loco parentis, non compos mentis, de facto, de iure, affidavit, pro se, ex post facto, nolo contendere, posse comitatus, sub poena, onus probandi, filius nullius, sine prole, habeas corpus. Non-lawyers among you, do any of these ring a bell? If they do not, let me assure you that our rights and judicial system have their roots in these and other Latin terms. I’ll briefly illuminate four of them as key concepts within the domain of law and for their resonance for students in their D’Evelyn coursework in English and Social Studies.
Students in Latin 1 initially get a laugh out of in loco parentis. Mistaking loco with its slangy Spanish homophone, they’ll often humorously (?) blurt out that the phrase means ‘parents are crazy’. I swiftly deny that assertion, and then we work through a more careful analysis of loco as a root having to do with place (cf. local and location). Ultimately we discuss the fact that in modern society schools (and occasionally some other organizations) are given the limited authority to act in the place of the parent while a child is outside the parent’s care. When it comes to ‘crazy’ we discuss non compos mentis and I explain that a court may declare not in control of his or her mind someone with extreme mental or emotional disabilities. In the courts such a declaration opens the door for appointment of a legal guardian who will act in the interest of one so afflicted. Stretching beyond the courts, I illustrate the discussion of non compos mentis with a striking image of King Lear from a graphic version of Shakespeare’s play (which all senior Jaguars read). We briefly discuss Lear’s story, from his mad demand that his daughters publicly quantify their love for him, to his tragically mad wanderings across the English heath as he seeks an end to his suffering.
In more advanced Latin study we encounter the grammar that allows students to understand and apply the concepts of onus probandi (the prosecution’s burden of proving the accused guilty) and habeas corpus. The former is certainly applicable in considering To Kill a Mockingbird. The latter, as you may know, is the principle that an arrestee may not be held indefinitely without charge. In short, a judge may issue a writ (order) that a sheriff, policeman, or other arresting agent have the body of the arrestee in the judge’s court at a specified time or date. The arrestee’s living presence in the court thus allows the judge to hear preliminary evidence to determine whether release, bail, or further detention is in order. For this phrase, my illustration is an image of the writ of habeas corpus issued in 1839 ordering the federal marshall of Connecticut to bring the surviving rebellious slaves who had been arrested aboard the Spanish ship La Amistad in American waters. As juniors, students will grow more acquainted with this and many other efforts to address the explosive question of whether these slaves were property in this case, to be returned to their Spanish owners) or people whose self-determination would allow them to be free to return to Africa. The writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge Andrew Judson was an early step towards the emancipation of these slaves, for it asserted that they might indeed be men deserving protection from indefinite imprisonment. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually (in 1841) affirmed that they should be treated as free men and released. It is our nation’s greatest tragedy that it would take much more time and explosive argument to generalize the principle that all slaves should be freed, but that is a topic for a better author than me.
The PHurrowed Brow 