[lbo-talk] DNA and the Common Law

[Curtiss Leung]

> I have not read this case, but while there is a
> respectable legal argument to be made that in the
> common and for that matter thecivil/con law tradition
> "marriage" has meant man-woman unions for a thousand
> years, there isn't much authority in the law for the
> idea the Blackstone and Coke and Glanville (great
> common law lawyers and legal scholars of previous
> centuries) had DNA in mind. There is an argument based
> on deep considerations in philosophy of language that
> that doesn't matter, but I rather doubt that legal
> decisions should turn on whether the Kripke-Putnam
> causal theory of reference is true.

The last sentence brings to mind something from
_Naked Lunch_: "I'm not touching that, me," says a 
hip young lawyer high on LSD-25.  "Why, a smart DA
could..."