MM posts re the alleged use by German lawyers of American law. I think it might actually make sense to adopt US law in other jurisdictions (including Louisiana, ho ho): Hollywood achieves far greater public scrutiny of controversial legislation than, for example, Spanish democracy. (But is Hollywood law the same as US law?) National pride would of course never permit any such development. The satirical popular sociologist, Mariano José de Larra, suggests (1835) that it would be unwise to go over to Anglo-style policing:

Our political police do not exist in the United States or in England; but we all know the clutter of ideas prevailing in those countries; there you can think whatever you want to think; however, liberty misunderstood knows extremes, and we, reading in the great, open book of revolution, as another speaker so felicitously remarked, must learn something from it and not follow in the footsteps of excessively free countries lest we end up in the same state of prosperity as those two nations. Wealth is a vice, and prosperity makes us proud, whatever you say.

It’s not just the Brits and Yanks, though: recall that the French helped pervert bullfighting.

Original

En los Estados Unidos y en Inglaterra no hay esta policía política; pero sabido es en primer lugar el desorden de ideas que reina en aquellos países; allí puede uno tener la opinión que le dé la gana; por otra parte, la libertad mal entendida tiene sus extremos, y nosotros, leyendo en el gran libro abierto de las revoluciones, como ha dicho muy bien otro orador, debemos aprender algo en él, y no seguir las mismas huellas de los países demasiado libres, porque vendríamos a parar al mismo estado de prosperidad que aquellas dos naciones. La riqueza vicia al hombre, y la prosperidad le hace orgulloso por más que digan.

Categories: Les bourgeois, Liberals & locals, The law court

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