Law as Mask. Legal Ritual and Relevance

In this Article, Professor Weyrauch examines the way in which the legal process 'nasks" the humanity of its particip ants.He suggests that such masks are inevitable attributes of any legal system, concluding that we can change the masks of the law, but we cannot eradicate them.Professor John T. Noonan, Jr., 1 has shown that some forms of legal reasoning have the potential to dehumanize persons through the use of conceptual "legal masks." 2 This striking metaphor puts into question familiar and fundamental aspects of law and legal processes.Professor Noonan presents an eloquent plea, supported by well-chosen illustrations, for greater consideration of persons, not to the exclusion of rules of law, but to overcome the tendency of the legal process to ignore its individual participants.Professor Noonan's insights have great appeal.His criticism may be justifiably leveled at the entire legal system.To carry the discussion one step further, many concepts, whether legal or not, may have the intrinsic capacity of masking human reality.The concepts "fact" and "reality,"jfor example, are no,less amorphous than legal concepts'and are equally amenable to being used as masks, perhaps more so because they appear to be clear.The concept of "property" has been used to enslave people, as Noonan shows, but so have the concepts of "love" and "freedom," and sometimes more effectively.The problem may be insoluble.There are also positive attributes of masking.It is beneficial that lawyers and judges do not always comprehend the human significance and the gravity of their acts.Such insight might make them cynical and eventually ineffective in their tasks, especially their task of rendering peace as skilled craftsmen even at the cost of occasional injustice.The public too, including the contestants, may need to avoid