Taking the Law with a Pinch of Salt: A Brief Collection of Emblems for Bonus Dives Imaginosus

This essay introduces the reader to the poetics (or, at least, the enargeia) of Peter Goodrich by offering an assembly of images seasoned with text, and vice versa. What follows is a short collection of emblems and their commentary. The Latinized name adopted for Professor Peter Goodrich, replacing the academic title (Pr.) with a new agnomen or nickname, is Bonus Dives Imaginosus. Bonus, meaning “good”, and dives, meaning “rich”, with imaginosus as a neologism advertising his connection with imagination and wit. Such additions to one’s name were well established in Antiquity and revived by humanists as a flyting game. In the case of Peter Goodrich, both adjectives “good” and “rich” already hint at distinguishing nicknames. The invention of an emblematic alter ego goes hand in hand with a tribute to Peter Goodrich’s baroque and pataphysical language, an outward contempt for the aseptic tongues of positivistic jurists, often sterilized by the academic chisel. The collection below, of emblems and accompanying discussion, is dedicated to Bonus Dives Imaginosus, the enfant terrible of Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, a published cook whose character is also a metaphor of a sleeping god, devoted to rêverie.