In this fourteenth episode of Learned Hands, the Official Podcast of the Westerosi Bar Association, Maester Merry & Clint from Laws of Ice and Fire ask: How does the First Law of Braavos shape the Braavosi legal system?
Our analysis this week includes:
- It’s Learned Hands’ second trip across the Narrow Sea!
- Clint offers an extremely tenuous analogy about Braavosi checks and balances!
- An in-depth analysis of the reasons why and how the First Law of Braavos developed!
- Everyone says only VERY GOOD THINGS about modern democracies!
- Merry asks the question on everyone’s mind: are the Braavosi the baddies?
- Everyone is shocked as neither Merry nor Clint can shut up even a little bit about constitutional legal theories!
- WBA members interrogate our Hands on the suboptimal parts of Braavosi society!
- The Braavosi First Law is compared and contrasted with a MYSTERY constitution explicitly based on upholding slavery! There is NO WAY you will guess which constitution it is!
Supplemental reading:
- Democracy’s Identity Problem, (discussing Habermas and Constitutional Patriotism)
- America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism,
- Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future,
- Roberto Unger, Personal Website,
- Constitutional design without Constitutional Moments,
- Gamifying constitutions
- Constitutional Design in the Ancient World, ,
- Atlantic articles talking about the US constitution in the context of contemporary problems
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-constitution-democracy/616949/,
- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/
- https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/identities/the-black-freedom-colonies-of-appalachia-where-former-slaves-could-speak-their-minds/
- 5-4 Podcast, Shelby County,
- Frederick Douglass on the Anti-Slavery Constitution: https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/fdscontent/uscompanion/us/static/companion.websites/9780199751358/instructor/chapter_5/frederickdouglas.pdf
Editing by LittleWolfBird. Bumpers by Kelly. Reading by Zach. Intro & Outro music courtesy Sid Luscious & The Pants. None of this should be construed as legal advice OBVIOUSLY.
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