04.02.20b. Legal Rights and Moral Duties of a Host and a Husband. James Fitzjames Stephen's book, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873?) rises in my estimation every time I dip into it. Here's his answer in Chapter 5 to people who said that to make the husband the head of the family is to create tyranny.

An exact parallel to the case of married life, is to be found in the common case of hospitality. You go into a handsome, well-appointed house, full of well-behaved people. You observe that one of the company exerts himself in every possible way to promote the enjoyment and to provide for the amusement or occupation of the rest, and that he in all cases studiously though unostentatiously takes, in a certain sense, the lowest place. You are told that this man has an undoubted legal right to order all the rest out of his house at a moment's notice--say in a storm in the middle of the night--to forbid them to touch an article of furniture, to open a book, or to eat a crumb of bread: and this appears harsh; yet if he were deprived of that right, if the presence of his guests rendered its existence doubtful for a moment in any particular, not one of them would cross his doors; matters go well, not because the master of the house has no powers, but because no one questions them, and he wishes to use them for the general comfort of the society.

Now that I think about it, this is relevant to the Bloomington Faculty Council's revision of the Student Code, on which I post below. Most of the procedures for student to change grades or to be disciplined seem based on the idea that unless professors and administrators are rigidly constrained, they will be tyrannical and unjust, out to oppress the students and forbid them even the most reasonable opportunity to present their side of the case. As with so many university, procedures, I bet that (a) this attitude was not inspired by any actual cases, just by possibilities, and (b) the result is not any extra protection, because the procedures are so obscure and complicated that they are largely ignored.

[in full at 04.02.20b.htm .      Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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