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Adam Gearey, Outlaw Blues: Law in the Songs of Bob
Dylan, 20 Cardozo L. Rev. 1401 (1999)

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 OUTLAW BLUES:
LAW IN THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN

Adam Gearey*

INTRODUCION
In a song called Maggie's Farm,1 Bob Dylan sings disparag-
ingly of "Maggie's ma" who lectures her servants on "man and
God and law."2 Although Dylan, himself, can occasionally sound
like Maggie's ma, difficult and troubling questions of the possibil-
ity of overcoming or opposing the law run through his work.
Tracing these questions through Dylan's songs makes it plain that
at the heart of his lyrics lies the need to articulate a law above the
law that is located in the space between man and God. Dylan re-
peatedly returns to the question which, dreadfully simplified, could
be paraphrased as: "How do I live my life?" This question's rele-
vance to religious or ethical debates is clear; its relevance to legal
debates, however, is somewhat obscure.
Dylan's songs provide an acute perspective on the difficult
conjunctions that exist between ethics and law. In his early "pro-
test songs" there is an opposition to the law of the State that is as-
sociated with the failure of the rule of law. The figure of the folk
hero and singer Woody Guthrie became for Dylan symbols of an
honesty which inspired a critique of positive law. To remain
authentic, however, the law of opposition cannot remain linked to
a name and cannot have a determined content; it must be a provo-
cation to articulate a new authenticity. Articulating this law, which
can be thought of as ethics that goes beyond the law, involves the
deployment of an increasingly theological language. For Dylan,
however, this is not a conventional working out of faith. Theology
is distorted by his placement of the law in the difficult space be-

* Lecturer in Law, Birkbeck College, University of London. I am very grateful to a

number of people for their assistance in the writing of this Article: Mary Grenham, Paul
Virr, Giray Ablay, Simon Youdale, Alexander Carmena Ljungstrom, Jane and Peter
Howard, Sally and Robert Cartledge, Anne Richardson, and all great listeners of Dylan
and participants in the carnival.
1 BOB DYLAN, Maggie's Farm, on BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME (Columbia Rec-
ords 1965).
2 Id.

1401
1402 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

tween divine and human codes and by the need for honesty of
communication and felicity to "the other." Dylan's conversion to
Christianity is discussed as an elaboration of this quest for the law,
and his Gospel songs analyzed as an attempt to state a law of love.3

I. WOODY GUTHRIE: SHATTERING THE LAW

Dylan's eponymous first album4 can be seen as an homage to
Woody Guthrie. In Song to Woody,5 Dylan borrows an ethic of
authenticity from the civil liberties movement.6 Guthrie provides a
symbol of sincerity and engagement, central both to Dylan's wider
opposition to the law7 and the very form of the song. In terms of
3 Although there is a risk in listening to Bob Dylan through the ears of Jacques Der-
rida, there are a number of ways to defend this project. Within English jurisprudence,
there is, of late, a willingness to take popular culture seriously. See, e.g., STEVE
REDHEAD, UNPOPULAR CULTURES: THE BIRTH OF LAW AND POPULAR CULTURE
(1995). Although the relevance of deconstruction to legal scholarship has long been es-
tablished, this Article proposes a new tactic, an elaboration of what Chris Stanley would
call a "wild zone." This approach is an intersection between texts and traditions enabled
by the collapse of distinctions between "high" and "low" culture, and "philosophy" and
"pop"; a cultural trend accelerated by post-modernity. Deconstruction will not be used as
some methodological tool to reveal the secrets of Dylan's work, but rather as a way of es-
tablishing historical, biographical, and textual contexts in following a trajectory, a single
trace through Dylan's words. There is an intimate connection between the openness of
Dylan's lyrics, their resistance to single definitive readings, and the techniques of decon-
struction. Moreover, there is an essential conjunction between this most American of po-
ets and Derrida's statement: "America is deconstruction." Derrida suggests that "Amer-
ica would be the proper name of deconstruction in progress, its toponymy, its language
and its place, its principal residence," or, in a modification of this thesis, "deconstruction
and America are two open sets which intersect partially." JACQUES DERRIDA,
MEMOIRES FOR PAUL DE MAN 18-19 (1986).
4 BOB DYLAN, BOB DYLAN (Columbia Records 1962).
5 BOB DYLAN, Song to Woody, on BOB DYLAN, supra note 4.
6 See GREIL MARCUS, INVISIBLE REPUBLIC 19-31 (1997). Marcus describes the roots
of Dylan's music in the folk revival and civil rights movement of the early sixties, as a "re-
vival" of "the constitution." Id. at 22. Dylan participated in the March on Washington,
where Martin Luther King's speech "reaffirm[ed] the credo of equal justice under the
law." Id. at 23. The song Blowin' in the Wind, itself based on an old anti-slavery song, No
More Auction Block (Many Thousands Gone), alongside the Baptist hymn, We Shall
Overcome, was used as an anthem for the movement. See id. at 23.
7 Dylan's commitment to Guthrie is itself an engagement with ethics in opposition
with the law. Dylan's early songs frequently took the form of ballads and broadsides
which identified and castigated failures of justice. There are a series of "protest songs"
which detail lynchings and the perversion of legal procedures, such as The Death of
Emmett Till, Only a Pawn in Their Game, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,and The
Ballad of Donald White. What Marcus describes as the politics of the folk revival ani-
mates these songs. They tend to be structured by an identification of the law with inflexi-
ble and oppressive mechanisms that crush the humanity out of honest people. In The
Ballad of Donald White, for instance, despite being a condemned murderer, White is por-
trayed as honest and self understanding enough to confess his crime and seek forgiveness.
In The Death of Emmett Till, a racist murder avoids punishment, depicting the law as un-
able to answer the needs of all. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll contains perhaps
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1403

its musical presentation it is starkly simple. Like all the material

on this album, Dylan accompanies himself on guitar and harmon-
ica; the song is built on a simple chordal structure with a ham-
mered on bass, distinctive of Guthrie's own guitar playing and
communicating with a whole tradition of Anglo-American folk
music. It is within this tradition that Dylan addresses Guthrie and
opens the space of communication. In literary terms this could be
described as the trope of prosopopeia, the summoning forth of the
face of the departed friend or lover, the celebration of the one de-
parted-"Hey, hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song."8
Song to Woody tells of experience in the world, "a thousand
miles" from home.9 Dylan was himself roused to discover a "world
of people and things" 10 by Guthrie's own songs of the people he
had met and the events he had witnessed. By evoking Guthrie,
Dylan stresses that he too has entered the world and can write a
song of memory and recollection that memorializes men bound for
glory. Dylan writes:
Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind."
This is about friendship and companionship in the face of a
cruel and exploitative world. In remembering Guthrie, Dylan
names not only those who became known through their music, but
all the others held together in traveling friendship as well.
Reaching back to the notion of pilgrimage, wandering, and settle-
ment," Dylan makes use of this great American theme to describe

the most articulate criticism of a law that claims to be impartial, but operates to protect
the rich, white male. Other songs tend to attack the law for its ethical failures. Percy's
Song is critical of the law's inability to award a fitting punishment. The critical attitude to
the law manifests itself in an almost superstitious belief that injustice throws out the bal-
ance of natural law, causing disturbances in nature itself. Percy's Song concludes with an
image of turning to the wind and the rain, as if the world itself is mourning Percy's fate.
Seven Curses contemplates the perversion of justice by a crooked judge that is so heinous
that the curses void every aspect of his humanity.
8 DERRIDA, MEMORIES FOR PAUL DE MAN, supra note 3, at 25.
9 DYLAN, Song to Woody, on BOB DYLAN, supra note 4.
10 Id.
11 Id.
12 For a contemporary overview of this theme in American literature, see RUSSEL J.
REISING, THE UNUSABLE PAST: THEORY AND THE STUDY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
(1986). See also F.O. MATrHIESSEN, AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: ART AND EXPRESSION
IN THE AGE OF EMERSON AND WHITMAN 626 (1941) (quoting Walt Whitman's call for a
myth of "man in the open air" as a key thematic in American culture). Apart from the
myth of the American West, and the influence of Woody Guthrie, the other essential con-
text for Dylan would be Jack Kerouac's mythology of the road. For a more general loca-
1404 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

the foundation of a counter-culture by a few friends who know

each other and who can be trusted with the vision of a different
world. a3 But there is a strange and disturbing effect that haunts
this gathering in memory of the friends. Despite the song's act of
memorialization, those recalled disappear like dust and are blown
away by the wind.
The honesty and friendship which the song announces can
never be linked to a fixed name. As much as it is necessary to re-
member Guthrie and the friends who are linked to his name, his
example cannot be made into a norm or a principle which is simply
accepted. Guthrie cannot become an idol, as his lesson is always
to return to experience which cannot be abstracted. These contra-
dictions are examined in a later prose poem, My Life in a Stolen
Moment." Guthrie's name is now more clearly linked with an
ethic or law whose evocation sets up a mise en scene with the Old
and New Testaments:
Woody Guthrie was my last idol
he was the last idol
because he was the first idol
I'd ever met
that taught me
face t'face
that men are men
shatterin' even himself as an idol 5
The idol could refer to the scene of the golden calf in Exodus;
the law given is against idols, the law of the one true God necessi-
tates the destruction of the idolatrous and the false. Within the
Christian Bible, this scene is repeated in Christ's giving of the new
law, which effectively replaces and supplements the tablets of the
law given on Mount Sinai. Just as certain Gospels have been read
as the destruction of the old law in the announcement of the new,
Guthrie gives the new law in the destruction of the old law. The
same iconoclasm later destroys Guthrie as the lawgiver.
The law is given "face to face," an honesty that reveals an es-
sence of humanity that "men are men." Law is thought of as a
mode of life, an ethic that is rooted in an attitude towards the
world. Linked to this new law is a perception of more than a con-

tion of Dylan within American culture, see WILFRED MELLERS, A DARKER SHADE OF
PALE: A BACKDROP TO BOB DYLAN (1984).
13 This is a common trope in the philosophy of friendship. See JACQUES DERRIDA,
POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP 35-45 (1997).
14 BOB DYLAN, LYRICS 1962-1965 (1987).
15 Id.
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1405

cern with outward appearances, or the mere abiding by a written

code. It seems to repeat a peculiarly Christian gesture, where the
law announced by Christ was written on the heart rather than in a
text. These Christian allusions are connected to Guthrie; he is the
first and the last, which links his name to John's vision of Christ on
Patmos. 16 When Dylan's later work is discussed, it will be argued
that the shattering of the lawgiver in the giving of the law is also
deeply imbedded within Dylan's Christianity.17 Rather than an
evangelical certainty, there are undertones which make the law
that Dylan receives from Christ open to the same tensions as an-
nounced in this poem. To remain true to the law, one has to move
beyond it.

II. FROM HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED TO JOHN WESLEY HARDING:

HONESTY OUTSIDE THE LAW
The giving of the law is a profoundly troubling moment. In
Dylan's "middle period" work, he investigates the encounter with
divinity that is linked in the Bible with the giving of the law. The
law must come and be declared, it must embody certain values and
decisions, but it is impossible to state the law's content. At best it
is an interpellation, a challenge from a beyond that cannot be re-
duced to certainty and thus leaves us in the silence of the world
and the torment of the decision. It is this tension that runs through
the central songs of the albums Highway 61 Revisited18 and Blonde
on Blonde. 9 These albums are characterized 2° by the "wild mer-
cury sound," built around the electric organ, appropriated from
the tradition of popular Church music and essential to the frac-
turing driven blues. 21 Bringing together these spiritual and secular
registers, and evoking Mercury, suggests that these songs are stut-
tering messages from the gods-an opening of the problematic
space between divinity and humanity. God speaks on Highway 61:

16 See Revelation 1:17.

17 Others have argued that Dylan's sensibility remains thoroughly Jewish. See, e.g.,
STEPHEN PICKERING, DYLAN: A COMMEMORATION (1971).
18 BOB DYLAN, HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED (Columbia Records 1965).
19 BOB DYLAN, BLONDE ON BLONDE (Columbia Records 1966).
20 See MARCUS, supra note 6 (discussing Dylan's musical development); see also DAVE
LAING ET AL., THE ELECTRIC MUSE: THE STORY OF FOLK INTO ROCK (1975).
21 Perhaps such a sound is more apparent in the recordings of the tours of 1965-1967,
which have not yet been officially released.
1406 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"

Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say "No," Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61. ' 22
God's command brings Abraham into a face to face relation-
ship with divinity. Even if this encounter is deflated with dark
humor, a serious point remains relating to the interpretation of the
divine message. Dylan is staging the archetypal hermeneutic
scene: How is the message to be understood and relayed? In the
story of Isaac, God's command to Abraham to kill his son can be
seen as the testing of faith. Abraham's faith leads him into the ter-
rible dilemma where he is obligated to obey God and is bound by
the demands of human decency not to harm his son. Abraham is
rewarded because he obeys God and the divine command which
demands obedience. Abraham's sacrifice is never completed.
However, in Dylan's rendering of the story, instead of the resolu-
tion of the Bible story, there is the ambiguity of Highway 61. Al-
though this verse opens with revelation, it defers to the space of
the world; there is no affirmation of certainty after the ordeal of
faith.
Dylan does not find the law solely in the command of God.
As Abraham must respond to God in Highway 61 Revisited, the
obligation is always to interpret the message of the erotic other.2 3
If faith is the keeping of a promise with God which is expressed in
a covenant of the law, then the messages of the erotic other must
be interpreted in felicity. To be bound erotically is, likewise, to ac-
cept a covenant, an obligation to the other. The erotic relationship
must be governed by a keeping of promises; the problem is how to
understand what the other has said or written.24 This is at the heart

22 BOB DYLAN, Highway 61 Revisited, on HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, supra note 18.

This is Dylan's only lyric to record a conversation between God and man.
23 See Leland A. Poague, Dylan as Auteur: Theoretical Notes, and an Analysis of
"Love Minus Zero/No Limit," 8 J. POPULAR CULTURE 53-59 (1974). In discussing Love
Minus Zero/No Limit, Poague writes, "some human beings are capable of the kind of
selfless love symbolized by Christ." Id. at 56.
24 For a reflection on the theme of love letters and law, see Peter Goodrich, Epistolary
Justice: The Love Letter as Law, 9 YALE J.L. & HUMAN. 245-95 (1997). Like the narrator
of Dylan's song, who is concerned with the possibility of communicating with his beloved,
Goodrich sees the love letter as opening an ethical space between lovers that is character-
ized by the demand for honesty: "The principle of fidelity precedes that of law." Good-
rich's work on the love letter is part of a wider study of the courts of love. Described by
Andreas Capellanus in a twelfth-century tract, the courts of love had jurisdiction over a
19991 OUTLAW BLUES 1407

of the epic Desolation Row:

Yes I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of a joke?25
Desolation Row is one of the many dialogues with lovers that
run through Dylan's work. Here the correspondent is castigated
for not showing an awareness of the depth of the narrator's de-
spair. What has to be maintained, in the midst of alienation and
confusion, is the "face t' face" which is both presupposed and in-
terrupted by writing. For all the dissembling and scrambling of the
message, the connection must be affirmed. An interpretation of
this obligation provides the essential context for one of Dylan's
most famous pronouncements on the law: "to live outside the law
you must be honest," the central lyric of Absolutely Sweet Marie.26
In Absolutely Sweet Marie, Dylan identifies some form of es-
sence, some essential quality that exists in the sweetness of Marie.
This traditional lovers' epithet seems to be used ironically as the
lyrics affirm a faith in a relationship that seems troubled. The re-
frain asks "where are you tonight Sweet Marie," but there is more
than simply irony here. The sweetness also describes the possibil-
ity of dialogue and, in particular, of promises and keeping prom-
ises." In the opening verse the narrator is presented as aban-
doned, waiting "inside of the frozen traffic," the recipient of
promises that, if not kept, have certainly not been granted. This
lyric trope of the yearning lover is specifically linked to a claim
made about the law:
Well, six white horses that you did promise
Were fin'lly delivered down to the penitentiary
But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree
But where are you tonight sweet Marie?"
This great pronouncement on the law exists between two
qualifying statements. What was promised appears to have been
finally delivered and leads to the affirmation of the honesty out-
side the law, the space of the outlaw. In Absolutely Sweet Marie,

variety of disputes from breach of confidence to violence between lovers. Dylan's own
need to preserve the law of fidelity moves towards his conversion to Christianity.
25 BOB DYLAN, Desolation Row, on HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, supra note 18.
26 BOB DYLAN, Absolutely Sweet Marie, on BLONDE ON BLONDE, supra note 19.
27 See FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, ON THE GENEOLOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC
(Douglas Smith trans., Oxford Univ. Press 1996).
28 BOB DYLAN, Absolutely Sweet Marie, supra note 26.
1408 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

Dylan is trying to articulate the possibility of a reciprocity of

promise-keeping within a world where promises are not kept.
Dylan's affirmation of promise-keeping, of the honesty outside the
law, immediately comes up against its contradiction: "But where
are you tonight sweet Marie?" Despite Marie's infelicity, the nar-
rator's faith in her is stressed by the final verse of the song, where
he gazes at her balcony, repeating her name as if to bring her to
him.
Dylan's linkage of the law to promises and felicity is further
explored in John Wesley Harding, 29 which focuses on the tensions
between the laws of God and the demands of the world. John
Wesley Harding represents a complete break from the musical
form of Dylan's previous two albums; it could be described as
pared down country blues. Dylan is perhaps trying to position
himself in relation to a country tradition that would allow a differ-
ent resource for working out a law of ethics-a kind of pastoral-
ism. 3° The title track introduces the outlaw John Wesley Harding,
and again there seem to be messianic associations. Harding is a
"friend to the poor," who "opened a many a door;" there are Bib-
lical resonances here and possible further allusions to Christ in the
line "[b]ut no charge held against him / Could they prove."31 At
the same time, John Wesley Harding is not Christ, for he has a
"lady by his side" and "[h]e trav'led with a gun in every hand. 3 2 It
is as if this song signifies the refusal of the grand gesture. The he-
33
roic narrative is left almost unfinished.

29 BOB DYLAN, JOHN WESLEY HARDING (Columbia Records 1968).

30 For a consideration of the pastoral as a mode within the legal judgment, see Dennis
R. Klinck, "This Other Eden": Lord Denning's Pastoral Vision, 14 OXFORD J. LEGAL
STUD. 25 (1994). Klinck sets out the political underpinnings of pastoral. Following Wil-
liam Empson's work on pastoral, he argues that the pastoral opposes the heroic to the
mundane; it suggests that the heroic celebration of the unique can learn from the pastoral
focus on the ordinary. In pastoral literature this is frequently associated with a nostalgia
for "the guileless, the plain speaking, the plain dealing" which can, in turn, be linked to
forms of reactionary politics. Id. at 28. These tensions are within Dylan's work, but this
Article shows that Dylan's pastoral does not simply privilege any one value, but choreo-
graphs the inescapable tensions between values which have to be faced. See also Gregg M.
Campbell, Bob Dylan and the PastoralApocalypse, 8 J. POPULAR CULTURE 696 (1975).
Campbell describes a pastoral or "green" apocalyptic vision in Dylan's work which has its
roots in Christian culture. Politically, this vision fed into the platform of the Populist Party
in 1892 and had its most recent manifestation in the student radicalism of the 1960s.
Campbell does not, however, discuss any explicit link to law and ethics in Dylan's work.
31 BOB DYLAN, John Wesley Harding,on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra note 29.
32 Id.
33 A similar refusal of the heroics of the outlaw, but one overlaid with a continuing fas-
cination for both the notions of promise and trust, can be found in the song Billy which
was written for Sam Pekinpah's film PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973).
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1409

John Wesley Harding is defined by a struggle to work out

what an ethics could mean. The songs see the increasingly explicit
engagement with questions of law in the widest of senses as a code
of living. Working through this code takes Dylan back to a ques-
tion of divinity. When God speaks on this album, however, it is
never directly, but in signs and dreams that have to be understood
in their essential ambiguity.
In DriftersEscape,34 an earlier scene, familiar from the protest
songs, is revisited. The drifter figure evokes the image of the out-
law and the figure of the outsider. However, instead of arguments
or social critique, in place of the denunciation of the unfairness of
the law, the defendant is left unsure of what he has been accused
of doing: "And still I do not know / What it was that I've done
wrong."35 This could be read as a rejection of the authority of the
law, a refusal to accept the notion of criminal behavior and al-
though these resonances remain, the drifter represents a kind of
everyman figure, rather than the heroic social critic or outlaw.
Drifter's Escape presents a judge very different from the cruel
figure of Seven Curses.36 He is an exasperated character who fails
to enlighten the drifter: "You fail to understand, he said / Why
' 37
must you even try?"1 The moral-less moral of the song is a sud-38
den bolt of lightning that strikes "the courthouse out of shape.
Whilst "everybody knelt to pray" the drifter makes his escape.39
Although the bolt of lightning begs to be read as an act of God, a
denouncement of the frailty of human rules of law, it is described
in such a matter of fact way as to suggest that it is a random event,
a fortuitous chance for the drifter to vanish from the scene of
judgment. Drifter's Escape leaves completely unresolved the ques-
tions it raises about the divinity of law.
God's silence, or at least his refusal to give a clear statement
of his law, means that Dylan is thrown back to contemplate his re-
lationships with others in the world to try to find some code in
honesty, fair dealing, and reciprocity. However, it is as if this quest
takes place in the shadow of God. Dear Landlord' explores the
space of ethics as the problematic recalling of divinity in the hu-

34 BOB DYLAN, Drifter'sEscape, on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra note 29.

35 Id.
36 BOB DYLAN, Seven Curses, on THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOLS. 1-3 (Columbia Rec-
ords 1991).
37 Id.
38 Id.
39 Id.
40 BOB DYLAN, Dear Landlord, on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra note 29.
1410 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

man. The ambiguity of the address is central:

Dear landlord,
Please don't dismiss my case.
I'm not about to argue,
I'm not about to move to any other place.
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know that this was meant to be true,
And if you don't underestimate me,
I won't underestimate you."
The plea to hear the case could be addressed to the judge, to
God, or even to the "brother," on whose trust and belief the singer
is calling. At the same time, this "case" can perhaps be under-
stood as one to be decided in the world, by people. In other
words, this does not appear to be a divine judgment. However,
what is the "gift"? What is given? This metaphor immediately
moves beyond the human and evokes a notion of mystery, of some
ground which gives. The truth of this can only be known through
some form of mutual honoring, a weighing of true worth by indi-
viduals who, the closing couplet suggests, stand before each other
as equals. Once again, the transcendental associations of the gift
are countered with a metaphor that, on the face of it, denies the
most high; but the music which underscores it, ends with a chord
that suggests irresolution of this issue rather than conclusion. How
can this be understood? It leaves this song profoundly open and
sets up a dialogue with the next piece, I Am a Lonesome Hobo. 2
I Am a Lonesome Hobo is a companion piece to both Drifter's
Escape and Dear Landlord. It returns to the notion of promise
and trust and appears to be a far more conventional tale of moral-
ity, describing the fall of the rich man in a language that is reminis-
cent of the economy of a biblical parable. There are also, possibly,
allusions to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus which has in-
deed entered the folk tradition in the song Dives and Lazarus.43
The rich man's fall is a failure of trust:
But I did not trust my brother,
I carried him to blame,
Which led me to my fatal doom,
To wander off in shame. 44

41 Id.
42 BOB DYLAN, I Am a Lonesome Hobo, on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra note 29.
43 Numerous recordings exist of Dives and Lazarus. For a collection of English folk
songs, see LEE CECIL SHARP & R. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, A SELECTION OF COLLECTED
FOLK SONGS (1951).
44 BOB DYLAN, I Am a Lonesome Hobo, supra note 42.
1999l OUTLAW BLUES 1411

This verse seems to describe the inexorability of a judgment

that is immanent in human action; there is a direct link between
the failure of trust and the "fatal doom." The Hobo has to remove
himself from society, from companionship, to become the solitary
wanderer. If it seems that this song moves towards some idea of
nemesis, or at least affirmation of divine justice, this is made
strange by the end of the ballad, which, like Drifter's Escape, re-
fuses to endorse any clear message:
Stay free from petty jealousies,
Live by no man's code,
And hold your judgment for yourself
Lest you wind up on this road.45
It might seem that this song should conclude with an affirma-
tion of God's code as opposed to the code of man; however, the
verse both denies and affirms a human code. Drawing on his tor-46
ment, the Hobo's advice is to "hold your judgment for yourself,
apparently a denial of a sacred code or law of divinity. Although
to "hold your judgment for yourself" echoes the Sermon on the47
Mount in St. Matthew's Gospel, "judge not lest ye be judged,
there is no other linkage to any messianic concerns in the present
verse. Announced here is a law that refers to a human space. The
logic of this human code links to the symbol of the road-taking to
the road in loneliness as the unavoidable punishment that follows
from a betrayal of trust.
If this seems to affirm a human law and a human code, any
hubris that might be associated with this act is demolished by the
next song, I Pity the Poor Immigrant.48 The title promises a protest
song, but instead of social reportage there is a profoundly enig-
matic anti-parable. Who is the Immigrant? Dylan does not asso-
ciate the Immigrant with any particular social group; it provides,
rather, a metaphor for what could be described as a condition of
being: a loneliness and a dispossession. Cast adrift in the world,
the Immigrant appears as one who has left any sense of belonging
behind him:
I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would've stayed home,
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone.49

45 Id.
46 Id.
47 Matthew 7:1.
48 BOB DYLAN, I Pity the Poor Immigrant,on BOB DYLAN, supra note 4.
49 Id.
 1412 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401
The song is itself an exercise in ethics; the Immigrant is the
object of criticism, the one who turns away from the singer's mes-
sage-a provocation to a new life. Closing the piece is an image of
the Immigrant's "visions" which must "shatter like the glass," a
simile which recalls the closing couplet of I Dreamed I Saw St.
Augustine, "I put my fingers against the glass / And bowed my
head and cried."50 Whereas I Dreamed I saw St. Augustine stresses
the pain between the vision and the yearning for awakening, I Pity
the Poor Immigrant describes the utter ruination which comes
from a selfish search for pleasure and self aggrandizement. It is
possible to see this as one of the songs that anticipates the most
dramatic event in Dylan's career, his conversion to Christianity.
As the surreal ramblings of the sleeve notes promise, "Faith is the
' 51
key."
Given Dylan's increasing preoccupation with Christianity, one
of the most interesting and transitional songs on the album is The
Wicked Messenger.2 The messenger comes from Eli, an ambigu-
ous figure, who appears in the Christian Bible in Samuel 1:13. Eli
is a priest and a judge. Although a Godly man, he fails to judge his
sons, and God had to do it for him. In the commentary on this
story in the Aggadah, it suggests that it can be read as showing that
''man must justify himself before his fellow men just as he must do
so before God."53 For Dylan, this justification involves the "good
news," or the Gospel, the new law, a living "by no man's code."
Although there are intervening records, this message which Dylan
finally delivers is his conversion to Christianity. The debate still
rages in critical circles over the location in Dylan's oeuvre of the
albums, Slow Train Coming,54 Saved,5 and Shot of Love.56 Some
have stressed the eccentricity of these works in both their ideologi-
cal and musical content, others have argued that these three late
albums represent an essential continuity, pointing to the recurrent
concerns with sin, redemption, and Christian imagery which can be
found even in the earliest songs.5 7 The contention here will be that

50 BOB DYLAN, I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra
note 29.
51 BOB DYLAN, I Pity the PoorImmigrant, on BOB DYLAN, supra note 4.
52 BOB DYLAN, The Wicked Messenger, on JOHN WESLEY HARDING, supra note 29.
53 Samuel 1:13.
54 BOB DYLAN, SLOW TRAIN COMING (Columbia Records 1979).
55 BOB DYLAN, SAVED (Columbia Records 1980).
56 BOB DYLAN, SHOT OF LOVE (Columbia Records 1981).
57 See ROBERT SHELTON, NO DIRECTION HOME: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF BOB
DYLAN (1986). For a general overview of Christian rock, see Jay R. Howard, Contempo-
rary ChristianMusic: Where Rock Meets Religion, 26 J. POPULAR CULTURE 123 (1992).
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1413

these records present yet another attempt to articulate the law

above the law. Scattered throughout the songs are fragments of
the Bible, particularly allusions and direct quotations from the
Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke that have always
figured in the elaboration of a Christian ethics. After a brief dis-
cussion of the underpinnings of Christian ethics, some central
themes are discussed with reference to a sample of representative
songs.

III. AIN'T No MAN RIGHTEOUS:

DYLAN'S CHRISTIANITY AND AN ETHICS ABOVE THE LAW
In the analysis of Song to Woody, it was suggested that for
Dylan the law is given in an intense, personal encounter that must
be memorialized. In doing so, Guthrie becomes a remembered
figure. Recalling him prompts ethical questions: How should I re-
spond? What should I do? This essential structure is repeated in
Dylan's Christianity. It would be profoundly difficult, however, to
disentangle the question of priority: Whether Dylan's response to
Guthrie was always proto-Christian, or whether his early experi-
ences conditioned his faith. Nonetheless, the important issue
raised is the connection between the personal encounter and a fig-
ure who both gives and transcends the law.
Saved dramatically shows that Dylan's conversion experience
is that of a direct encounter with Christ:
I was blinded by the devil,
Born already ruined,
Stone cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb.
By His grace I have been touched,
By His word I have been healed,
By His hand I've been delivered,
By His spirit I've been sealed.'8

58 BOB DYLAN, Saved, on SAVED, supra note 55; see SHELTON, supra note 57, at 482-
83. Dylan's conversion is dated to 1978. He is quoted as saying: "There was a presence
in the room that couldn't have been anyone but Jesus." Id. at 483. Also quoted in the
booklet accompanying the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, is a further reflection on this experi-
ence from 1979: "Jesus tapped me on the shoulder, said, 'Bob, why are you resisting me?'
I said, 'I'm not resisting you!' He said, 'You gonna follow me?' I said, 'Well I've never
thought about that before."' Bob Dylan, Liner Notes to THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOLS. 1-3,
supra note 36. There is a suggestion that Dylan was considering these issues a long time
before either of these dates. See also BARRY MILES GINSBERG: A BIOGRAPHY 461
(1989) (noting a conversation between Dylan and Ginsberg which took place in 1975).
Ginsberg asked Dylan whether he believed in God, to which Dylan replied:
Yes, I do. I mean, I know because where I am I get the contact with-it's a cer-
tain vibration-in the midst of-you know, I've been up the mountain, and-
1414 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

Understanding the role of the law in this conversion experience

means approaching the theological underpinnings of Dylan's
Christianity. His rebirth is a realization that it is only through
Christ that fallen nature is reconciled with God. At the core is a
Christology, the "lived love of God in Jesus."59 The world of sin is
a turning away from God to the barrenness of the finite self; alien-
ated and trapped in the consciousness of death. God's love for the
world, expressed through Christ, is the possibility of salvation.
Love is the point of mediation, it is what allows divinity a presence
in the world. Dylan's expression of this love returns to his need to
think the "essence," the "absolute" as a promise, a commitment
made. In the earlier songs this existed between people; it now be-
comes integral to the experience and commitment of Christian
faith. Whereas Absolutely Sweet Marie was a song of lost messages
and deliveries gone astray, Saved is a song of arrival and recogni-
tion: "By His hand I've been delivered /By His spirit I've been
sealed."60 It is as if the same question is being asked again: What
does it mean to live outside the law? The question is given an es-
pecial urgency in these albums, where the law is always connected
with suffering: "[S]uffering under the law"; 61 "[the] laws are out-
dated,' 62 "[1]ook around, ya see so many social hypocrites /Like to
make rules for others while they do just the opposite, ' 63 "[y]ou got
gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. '64 The answer

yes, I've been up the mountain and I had a choice. Should I come down? So I
came down. God said, "okay, you've been up on the mountain, now you go
down. You're on your own, free. Check in later, but now you're on your own.
Other business to do, so check back in sometime. Later."
Id. This conversation is interesting because it places into context the dramatic experience
of 1978; it also suggests that what is being discussed is an attitude towards the law. One
wonders if Dylan is thinking of Moses when he uses the image of the mountain? For fur-
ther analysis of Dylan's conversion, see CLINTON HEYLIN, BOB DYLAN: BEHIND THE
SHADES 327 (1991).
59 See DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, ETHICS 9 (1955). There is no evidence that Dylan is
familiar with Bonhoeffer. His presence in this essay is to continue the disturbance begun
by the Derridean notions of ethics and friendship. Bonhoeffer's interpretation of Christi-
anity has certain resonances with the "religionless religion" that seems to be emerging in
Derrida's own work. The presence of Bonhoeffer is hinted at in JOHN D. CAPUTO, THE
PRAYERS AND TEARS OF JACQUES DERRIDA: RELIGION WITHOUT RELIGION 219
(1997). Caputo suggests that Bonhoeffer could be a central figure in the invention of a
Christianity that becomes more than that religion criticised by Nietzsche in The Genealogy
of Morals.
60 DYLAN, Saved, supra note 58.
61 BOB DYLAN, PreciousAngel, on SLOW TRAIN COMING, supra note 54.
62 BOB DYLAN, Slow Train, on SLOW TRAIN COMING, supra note 54.
63 BOB DYLAN, Ain't No Man Righteous (No Not One), on THE BOOTLEG SERIES
VOLS. 1-3, supra note 36.
64 BOB DYLAN, When You Gonna Wake Up?, on SLOW TRAIN COMING, supra note
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1415

to this question is now given by the word of Christ, and Dylan un-
derstands this as ethics of perfection.
The structure of this ethics of perfection follows from the en-
counter of the individual with Christ and the notion of following
the will of God. Motivation for action must not be based on self-
love or the need for approval by others, but on the honor of God.65
A strong contrast with human codes thus emerges; the norms de-
manded by Christ must always be excessive and transcend human
standards. These excessive ethics are linked to an inwardness, a
self mastery, that can be linked to a correspondence between word
and deed, as reflected in good actions. Ethical inwardness is a pre-
requisite for action in the world.
As an ethics resting on revelation, on the direct encounter,
there is traditionally seen to be a resistance to legalism in Christian
ethics. There is insufficient space here to examine this complex
topic; but, in brief, the key issue is the centrality of the love com-
mand: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. '6 6 Some scholars
have argued that this should not be seen as an attempt to super-
sede the law of Moses as it offers no general code of rules as a re-
placement. There is, however, a more radical sense that the old
law was incomplete and that there is now a more profound law
that could be used to examine the old law. Again, this is pro-
foundly problematic. If this is a statement of the Kingdom, how is
this new law to be determined in this world? The problem that
this opens up has always bedeviled Christianity and has always
maintained within it a utopian core that can be used to contend
with the more pessimistic or reactionary deployments of faith.67

54.
65 See GEORGE F. THOMAS, CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY (1955).
Matthew 19:19.
66
67 There is a massive body of scholarship on the meaning of the new law in The New
Testament. A general review of the position would suggest that the different synoptic
Gospels have lent themselves to different approaches. St. Matthew's Gospel was seen as
the most Catholic; combining a variety of both liberal and conservative positions. St.
Mark's Gospel was read as abrogating both oral and written law from the perspective of
later "Gentile Christianity." St. Luke's Gospel was seen as the least concerned with the
question of the law; his presentation of Christ was of a believer and upholder of Mosaic
law who, at the same time, rejects certain propositions. See ROBERT BANKS, JESUS AND
LAW INTHE SYNOPTIC TRADITION (1975). Banks argues that scholarship has, on the
whole, moved away from the orthodox understanding of the Gospel as a re-interpretation
of Mosaic coihmands. In the early twentieth century, scholarship was concerned with the
elements of abrogation from Mosaic law and with eschatological themes in Christ's teach-
ing of the law. The "historico-critical" approach to the question tended to stress that there
was no abrogation from the old law; the essence of Christ's teaching was to penetrate
through to the law's true essence. Discrepancies in the Synoptic accounts of the law were
seen as expressing tensions between the early and late periods of Christ's ministry and
1416 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

Perhaps the most powerful statement of this utopian urge, this law
against the law, has been that of Martin Luther King. King be-
lieved in the challenge to unjust law that came from Christian
thought and practice. It provided the underpinning of a philoso-
phy of non-violence which justifies the breach of unjust laws
through respect for the greater justice of a law which "uplifts hu-
man personality."68
Dylan's own attempt to articulate love can be traced to the
song Do Right to Me Baby,69 which is built around an allusion to
Luke 6:31-"treat others as you would like them to treat you"-or
in Matthew 7:12-"always treat others as you would like them to
treat you. '"70 Modem scholarship has suggested that this is a prin-
ciple rather than a rule, as it does not have the nature of a rule
which determines a "kind of action that is right or wrong, or that

public and private expositions of the law. Form criticism also contributed to the increasing
understanding of discrepancies in the account as representations of the transmission of
various traditions by the early Churches. Radical accounts which moved on from the in-
sights of the historical approach also began to see Christ's presentation of the law as a
radical break with the old law, a setting aside of certain elements of Mosaic law, and even
suggested that the Old Testament commands were now to be tested against Jesus's new
presentation of the law. See W.G. KUMMEL, PROMISE AND FULFILLMENT (1957). An
interesting new phase in the scholarship has been a return to the possibility of recreating
the attitude of Christ himself in the law, rather than concentrating on the inventions of the
evangelists themselves. This is linked to a movement called the New Morality and the
positing of a situation ethics. See also JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN, RAID ON THE
ARTICULATE: COSMIC ESCHATOLOGY INJESUS AND BORGES (1976). Crossan tries to
recover the "narrative paradoxes" inherent in the original sayings of Christ. Jesus is not
offering case law, however ideal or radical, but is challenging the legal tradition in the
form of "case parody," a reminder that "the Holy is more fundamental than any case law."
68 Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail,in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE:
THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 289-302
(James Melvin Washington ed., 1986); see also Martin Luther King, Jr., The Strength to
Love, in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE, supra, at 491-517. The writings of Martin Luther King
provide another essential context for Dylan and the law of love. There is also a sense in
which a dialogue could be opened between King and Derrida over ideas of law and friend-
ship. King rejects the Nietzshean line that love for an enemy suggests Christianity's weak-
ness or impracticality. It is rather "an absolute necessity for our survival." King defines
"agape," the love of God, as "understanding and creative," it is "redemptive goodwill for
all men," or, "an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, agape is the love of God
operating in the human heart." Id. at 491. Agape, in Derridean terms, seems to operate in
an economy beyond return. For a development of this theme in legal theory, see Anthony
E. Cook, Beyond Critical Legal Studies: The Reconstructive Theology of Dr. Martin Lu-
ther King, Jr., in CRITICAL RACE THEORY: THE KEY WRITINGS THAT FORMED THE
MOVEMENT 90-102 (Kimberle Crenshaw ed., 1996).
69 BOB DYLAN, Do Right to Me Baby, on SLOW TRAIN COMING, supra note 54.
70 Dylan states this verse positively. For a discussion of the implications of the positive
and negative statement of this rule, see Marcus G. Singer, The Golden Rule, 38 PHIL. 293
(1963). Singer comments that "[d]o unto others as you would have them do unto you" is
the most common contemporary expression of the golden rule. Id.
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1417

ought or ought not to be done."'" It names a principle from which

rules to meet specific circumstances can be derived. This could de-
scribe the operation of Dylan's song. Each verse lists a series of
situations in which the singer stresses his need to behave correctly:
Don't wanna judge nobody, don't wanna be judged,
Don't wanna touch nobody, don't wanna be touched.
Don't wanna hurt nobody, don't wanna be hurt.
Don't wanna treat nobody like they was dirt.
But if you do right to me, baby,
I'll do right to you, too.
Ya got to do unto others
Like you'd have them, like you'd have them, do unto you.72
Do Right to Me Baby is reminiscent of the earlier All I Really
Want to Do,73 in its repetition of negative propositions. Still un-
derlying both is the need for friendship, for honorable behavior
between others, but now this friendship is mediated by faith. It is
the resounding final line, "[d]on't put my faith in nobody, not even
a scientist, ' 74 which states an agapaic circuit, a love that passes
through God to men and women.
What is also important about Do Right to Me Baby is its
opening allusion to St. Matthew's Gospel: "Pass no judgment, and
you will not be judged. ' 75 Despite professing not to judge, the
song does indeed concern a judgement, if not, indeed, the very
foundation of legitimate judgment. 76 It seems that the very at-
tempt to point a principle of justice, in this instance, is to deny that
it is so doing. Is this not similar to the poem about Guthrie already
examined?77 To create a principle or a standard of justice is imme-
diately to fail to measure up to it. It is to assert ethics in the very
failure of ethics. This strange structure can be traced through
other songs of this period. It is writ large in Ain't No Man Right-
eous, No Not One." To dedicate your life to "serve[] the Lord" is
to engage in the impossible, to have an ethic which is unachiev-
able. Furthermore, there can be no knowledge of the truth which
71 Id. at 294.
72 DYLAN, Do Right to Me Baby, supranote 69.
73 BOB DYLAN, All I Realy Want to Do, on ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN (Colum-
bia Records 1964).
74 DYLAN, Do Right to Me Baby, supra note 69.
75 The first line of Do Right to Me Baby reads: "Don't wanna judge nobody, don't
wanna be judged." Id.
76 SINGER, supra note 27, at 309. Singer states that: "[T]he Golden Rule is the source
or at the basis of the Principle of Justice." Id.
77 See supra text accompanying notes 14-15.
78 BOB DYLAN, Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One, on BOOTLEG SERIES VOLS. 1-
3, supra note 36.
1418 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

underlies faith; just as it cannot be achieved, it cannot be under-

stood except in paradox:
Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind,
Say, "Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign."
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within,
When what's lost has been found,
what's to come has already been?79
It could be compared to the sentence which Derrida mediates
upon extensively: "0 my friends, there is no friend."80 This is
taken as a "performative contradiction," a simultaneous assertion
and counter-assertion.8' How can this be understood? Dylan's
faith needs to be appreciated as looking beyond the world from a
location within the world. Its extreme statement means that it in-
dicates an impossibility that nevertheless has to be experienced as
a ground of possibility.
It might be objected that these albums leave Dylan with a pi-
ety, an internal perfection that shirks the responsibility of the pro-
test albums where ethics were personal as well as political. On the
contrary, the Christian albums find Dylan immersed in the world.
What indeed lies behind the very musical form of these albums is a
need to make an accessible public statement of faith.82 However,
there is, at once, almost a double structure to this faith. Despite
the much publicized negative and reactionary elements, there is a
progressive dimension that is intimately connected to the critique
of the law. The songs remain in dialogue with this dynamic.
Rather than definitive statements they should be as notes towards
an authentic Christian politics. The Slow Train, or the Kingdom, is
always on its way. To declare its presence would be the act of
pride against which Dylan is always warning himself. The gap be-
tween the discipline of faith that is involved and the fallen world
runs through the songs. But it is precisely in the fallen world, that
the salvific encounter takes place:

79 BOB DYLAN, Pressing On, on SAVED, supra note 55.

80 JACQUES DERRIDA, AMERICAN IMAGO 353-91 (1993).
81 DERRIDA, POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP, supra note 13, at 353.
82 See MELLERS, supra note 12, at 206-78. Mellers argues that the Gospel form, which
is based on an "antiphonal" exchange between the leader and the chorus, serves to "link
the individual with the tribe." Dylan's use of the form, though, is frequently too vehe-
ment, suggesting Dylan's own misgivings about his faith. For instance, in What Can I Do
For You?, the lyrical "self righteousness" is offset and "belied" by the "misplaced rhythm,
which inculcates a bemused bewilderment."
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1419

I had a woman down in Alabama,

She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic,
She said, "Boy, without a doubt, have to quit your mess and
straighten out
You could die down here and become ' 83
just another
accident statistic.
The encounter is a prevalent concern in Dylan's work. In an
earlier song, like Went to See the Gypsy, 4 the meeting is ambigu-
ous, the message impossible to disentangle while the need to un-
derstand remains. Here the message is clear. In the face of im-
pending and imminent death, one must address the last things as a
necessary stage before the proper engagement with the world; it is
a stance that returns to the ethical trope of the need for self mas-
tery and the decision. When the engagement with the law takes
place, the terms of the critique draw entirely on this ethics:
"Man's ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don't apply no
more."85
The law's problem is that of pride and self-aggrandizement,
which is at its root the failure to put the other before the self. The
overcoming of the law has at least two senses. It describes, in the
first sense, the failure of the rule of law, which in the terms of the
song could be related to capitalist economics which, for Dylan,
controls flows of capital rather than answering to social justice.
Furthermore, it is this need for an overcoming of the law in the
name of social justice that is the second sense of this line. Law
86
needs to be overcome with a law which will serve humanity.
It is possible to save some notion of existential judgment from
the evangelical belief in the literalness of apocalypse.87 Arguably

83 DYLAN, Slow Train, supra note 62.

84 BOB DYLAN, Went to See the Gypsy, on NEW MORNING (Columbia Records 1970).
85 DYLAN, Slow Train, supra note 62.
86 Dylan's work could be located within a responsible form of Christian politics, which
is organized around struggles for social justice. See THOMAS, supra note 24. For a devel-
opments of the problems faced by this kind of politics, see EMILE BRUNNER, JUSTICE
AND SOCIAL ORDER (1945). Brunner affirms a link between distributive justice and law
as mediated by Christianity.
87 There are some interesting conjunctions between Dylan, Derrida, and the theolo-
gian Karl Rahner over this question of eschatology. In his writings on law, Derrida has
affirmed an avenir, a future which will come in a way which is unexpected. Dylan's Chris-
tian apocalyptics can be reclaimed from this perspective by approaching eschatology from
a theological perspective where the thinking of a coming future does not lead to a notion
of eschatology as the working out of a pre-determined divine plan. See KARL RAHNER, 4
THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 323-47 (1982). Rahner argues that Biblical eschatology
must always be read as an assertion based on the revealed past and pointing towards the
genuine future, not as an assertion pointing back from an anticipated future into the pres-
ent. Rahner's reading of eschatology refers to the essence of man as involving acts of self
1420 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

this can be found in Dylan's songs which bring together an apoca-

lyptic with a sophisticated need to work out what this means for an
attitude towards the world that tries to honor the other. The
Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar8 works at this nexus. Ambiguity
surrounds the song's apocalyptic imagery; there are both concrete
images of "[c]ities on fire, phones out of order," 9 which have no
obvious link to scriptural imagery, and direct allusions to the New
Testament ("seen the massacre of the innocent"), which give a
Biblical framework, without suggesting that this is to determine
the song's overall symbolism. 90 These Biblical resonaces charac-
terize the chorus:
East of the Jordan, hard as the Rock of Gibraltar,
I see the burning of the page,
Curtain risin' on a new age,
See the groom still waitin' at the altar.91
Animating these lines is a tension between an anticipation of
something that will come and a deferment, a suspension in the
moment, "the groom still waitin' at the altar."92 This is the time of
ethics. Dylan's Christianity expresses itself in the eschatology of
the happening which makes for a moment of authentic being. To
make a decision is to be involved in a concrete situation and di-
lemma, but also to be aware that your actions will be judged at
some future point:

understanding that refer both to the past and a projected future; a future as "being to-
wards death" in which man works out his salvation with God. Rahner's future must have
a "hiddeness," it must be "marvelous, unexpected and amazing." Id. at 332. The future
must involve an element of risk, of moving towards the unknown.
88 BOB DYLAN, The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, on SHOT OF LOVE, supra note
56.
89 Id.
90 Matthew 2:16.
91 DYLAN, The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, supra note 88.
92 For a consideration of the "the ghost of the undecidable" and the "aporia" of the
decision, see Jacques Derrida, Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundationof Authority," 11
CARDOZO L. REV. 919 (Mary Quaintance trans., 1990). The ghost of the undecidable re-
mains within the decision as something that cannot be worked out as a dialectical subla-
tion. Derrida relates the undecidable to justice, as justice will always contain an excess
which looks towards a transformation, an "avenir," or "the very dimension of events irre-
ducibly to come." Id. at 969. In a political sense, justice should be that force which trans-
forms in the name of what is to come. For a further development of this theme, see
ADAM GEAREY, RE-READING ST. AUGUSTINE, FAITH IN LAW (Peter Oliver et al. eds.,
1999).
1999] OUTLAW BLUES 1421

Don't know what I can say about Claudette

that wouldn't come back to haunt me,
Finally had to give her up 'bout the time
she began to want me.93
These lyrics perform an act of self-judgment which manifests
the end of time, the point at which one is judged. At the time of
decision, which was presumably to separate from Claudette, the
narrator was aware that this judgment would come; his very "con-
fession" presupposes this future judgment which is now manifested
by the song. What is haunting is precisely that this judgment can-
not be escaped, but is also indeterminate, in that it depends on the
narrator's decision. Judgment is a ghost of the future, it is in-
volved in a shadowy form in every present decision which is aware
of a need for future justification. In facing this haunting, these
lines try to establish an honesty of communication, an attempt to
understand what it means to commit yourself to the other. The
demands of faith also condition this moment of decision: "But I
know God has mercy on them who are slandered and humili-
ated."94
In the moment of justification, faith has to be taken into ac-
count; left ambiguous by this lyric, though, is whether this is a fac-
tor in the decision, or a hope for a judgment to come. Once again,
the future must always leave in question the completeness and suf-
ficiency of any decision. This is further suggested by another cen-
tral question: Who has been slandered and humiliated, the narra-
tor, Claudette, or both of them? As much as the decision must be
made, it is shot through with ambiguity. In this eschatology of the
present, Dylan is trying to state a law to which one is bound. He
cannot escape the obligation because it will return to haunt him;
Claudette is a cipher for a law that obligates: "I'd a-done every-
thing for that woman if she didn't make me feel so obligated."95
To reject the obligation to the other is to affirm it in denial; there
is nothing the narrator can say that "will not return to haunt
him. 9 6 Dylan himself might be the groom still waiting, almost
brought to the moment of commitment, the time of decision, but
suspended.

93 DYLAN, The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, supra note 88.
94 Id.
95 Id.
96 Id.
1422 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20:1401

CONCLUSION
For Dylan, to be oppositional to the law is not to reject the
law, but rather to believe in a more radical law. It is for the indi-
vidual to work though the implications of the tensions that exist
between the two laws; in this sense there is no "message" to Dy-
lan's words, just the repeated attempt to engage the demands and
obligations that different situations and events impose. It is indeed
this repetition, rather than any dialectic, which lies behind Dylan's
articulation of the law. The compression forced on the discussion
has meant that it has not been possible to explore all the ramifica-
tions of the law's appearance, particularly in the later "protest"
songs like Hurricane 97 and George Jackson,9" or even the epics of
obligation, such as Tangled Up in Blue.9 9 However, the essential
encounter with the suffering other or the erotic other structures
these songs as much as the pieces focused upon.
If this Article has succeeded in bringing together Dylan and
readings inspired by "deconstruction," it is hoped that this par-
ticular conjunction between law and music might communicate
with other engagements with American radical culture, and open
up further discussions of law, ethics, and political possibilities.
That the law and the law above the law continue to haunt Dylan is
testified to by the title of his most recent album, Time Out of
Mind,"°° which gestures at once at both the origins of the law, and a
sense of derangement that attests to an investigation of the obliga-
tions of the law of love.

97 BOB DYLAN, Hurricane,on DESIRE (Columbia Records 1976).

98 BOB DYLAN, GEORGE JACKSON (Columbia Records 1971) (single).
99 BOB DYLAN, Tangled Up in Blue, on BLOOD ON THE TRACKS (Columbia Records
1975).
100 BOB DYLAN, TIME OUT OF MIND (Columbia Records 1997).