8821. Campbell, p15-20
8822. Boyer, p98
8823. Ibid, p99
8824. Ibid, p100 footnote 51
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necessity of the state to theorize and then realize through legislation contingencies mitigating ‘danger’ as an example of the ‘external’ world, drives to the root of adopting meanings of sovereign.21
VVThat only what is clearly defined can be accurately valued or meaningfully exchanged challenges Schmitt’s State of Exception in that the correct recognition of the facts and subsequent elucidation is established through the process of argumentation by responsible parties to the debate.22 Schmitt’s hypothesis is challenged when considering martyrdom, a rival integrity when a citizen is forced to choose to be a martyr, a certain state of exception to be sure, as the only option of opposition in a global hegemon. Coke, and later Jefferson, in their works focused on decision making, the process of arriving at a determination, not the particular determination itself; never reaching the temporal horizon, or as Coke and Jefferson may have indicated, it’s the journey not the destination that is exceptional. Coke once counseled, “Law and discretion should be concomitant, and that one to be an accident inseparable to the other, so as neither law without discretion, lest it should incline to rigor, nor discretion without law, lest confusion should follow, should be put in use.”23 He concludes that legal precedent traces similarity of fact rather than illustrates common principles by perpetually challenging current structures in practice and theory, a key methodology in his ‘artificial reason’ logic.24
VVThe methodology of artificial reason is a central theme in Minority Report. The movie challenges preemption temporally through dialogue; “the fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen,” or “it’s not the future if you stop it.” The opening sequence shows an imminent murder being averted by a PreCrime unit’s timely intervention. The perpetrator is Mirandized for a murder he had not committed, ‘haloed’ (a physical incapacitating headband) and sent to the Hall of Containment to serve out his sentence. The next sequence follows PreCrime’s John Anderton (Tom Cruise) on a late night run through a dystopian 2054 Washington, D.C. cityscape where video advertisements promote PreCrime for an upcoming national referendum. One ad flashes “Life”, “Liberty” and “Pursuit of Happiness” while a voice over proclaims, “That which keeps us safe, will also keep us free,” establishing the narrative framework for what unfolds.