Adjudicating Europe

We all have ideals and goals that are unlikely to ever be achieved but still pursue them with enthusiasm because to do otherwise would be to admit defeat. This seemed to be the motto enlightening most of the brave AG Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer’s opinions listed by Pescatorius in his tribute post.

If he were born on the other side of the Atlantic, a legal thinker of his stature would have attained the same visibility of a Richard Posner or a Stephen Breyer. He would have run a blog, like many US legal figures of his age, and published extensively not only on the law but also in other fields of human knowledge. In particular, his acute understanding of legal enduring issues as they are explored in great literary texts would have led him to lay down the foundations for a EU law & literature movement. His erudition and intellectual acumen would have probably made him stand out of the epistemic community to which he belonged. Yet this is not what the Weltanschauung dominating his times let him to do. Thus, he preferred to act within the boundaries of his AG role, by shaping his opinions in a unique and incredibly modern way: through the metaphors, the actors, the heros and the topoi of the world literature.

By combining literature’s ability to provide insights into the human conditions with the legal framework that regulate those human experiences, AG Ruiz-Jarabo managed to bring – more than any other of his peers – EU law close to the real life of the European citizens. This is quite an achievement at the Époque of the Lisbon Treaty.

As many of his aficionados readers, I used to read his opinions on Sunday. This is the time you are supposed to give up your novel to go back to the upcoming business’ readings. What a better reading than AG Ruiz-Jarabo’s opinions to bridge the weekend time to the ethics of the working Monday? Always visionary, passionate – and like any respectable piece of literature – always impeccably crafted and polished: these are the opinions I’ll be missing the most this Sunday and those that will follow.

As Jorge Luis Borges said “La muerte es una vida vivida. La vida es una muerte que viene”

Mancinus