The People's History & the Cold War

[Michael Bailey]

dipping into Bartleby again...

I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or
in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of
a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and
mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently
safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to
poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand
point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity,
but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession
by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat,
for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto
bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John
Jacob Astor’s good opinion.	   3
  Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins,
my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now
extinct in the State of New-York, of a Master in Chancery, had been
conferred upon me.

a) John Jacob Astor, the original fur-henchman....
b) also traded in opium
c) behind every great fortune there is a great crime
d) Chancery -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Court_of_Chancery
e) "It was the court with jurisdiction on cases of equity in the state
of New York from 1777 to 1847. It served also as a court of appeal
which reexamined cases decided by the New York State Supreme Court"
f) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_%28law%29
g) Equity is the name given to the set of legal principles, in
jurisdictions following the English common law tradition, that
supplement strict rules of law where their application would operate
harshly. In civil legal systems, broad "general clauses" allow judges
to have similar leeway in applying the code.[1]

Equity is commonly said to "mitigate the rigor of common law",
allowing courts to use their discretion and apply justice in
accordance with natural law. In practice, modern equity is limited by
substantive and procedural rules, and English and Australian legal
writers tend to focus on technical aspects of equity. There are 12
"vague ethical statements"[2][3] that guide the application of equity,
and an additional five can be added.[2]

As noted below, a historical criticism of equity as it developed was
that it had no fixed rules of its own, with the Lord Chancellor
occasionally judging in the main according to his own conscience. The
rules of equity later lost much of their flexibility, and from the
17th century onwards equity was rapidly consolidated into a system of
precedents much like its common-law cousin.

so...hmm...one could think of Bartleby as a "spirit of equity" who was
phased out...and the whole as a commentary on the development of
jurisprudence...