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The Spirit of the Law Is What Matters
Narrow legalism ends in authoritarianism
Cyrus W. Farris was a mail agent in Gallatin County, Kentucky, a rural area just over the border from Indiana. But Farris was no ordinary mail carrier — he had been indicted twice for murder by grand juries. So Sheriff John Kirby set out to detain him, stopping a mail steamer on which Farris had been traveling in order to arrest him.
In a remarkable act of chutzpah, Farris argued that his arrest was illegal because it was against the law to “obstruct… the passage of the mail.” The case eventually went the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Unsurprisingly, the court sided with the sheriff, finding that Farris could not get away with murder because he happened to be riding on a mail boat at the time of his arrest. The court’s decision argued that
All laws should receive a sensible construction. General terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression, or an absurd consequence, and it will always be presumed that the legislature intended exceptions to its language, which would avoid results of this character.
In short, the Supreme Court ruled that people should use common sense when interpreting the laws. Rather than getting hung up on the letter of the law, we should…
