Democracy, Law, Judges and Solitude. Some Reflection from Walden and the Lake Isle of Inisfree

Abstract

The paper reflects upon Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods and W.B. Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Inisfree. It aims at suggesting that the image of solitude and insulation pervading both works of literature functions as a good metaphor for the paradigm of judicial reasoning which is dominant among legal scholars, particularly among those who champion a prominent role of the judiciary in the interpretation of constitutional norms, as well as a control exercised by judges on other branches of government. This last assertion works as a methodological constraint for the paper, as I shall only be concerned with the way in which judges perform their duties in polities where judicial supremacy is the norm, i. e., where judges hold the final word in the interpretation of a constitution.