Ostracise, Arsenic, Democracy, Positivism

Learnt some interesting things in Jurisprudence today.

1. The etymological root for the word 'Ostracise' is from ancient Greece, where citizens could report annoying persons to the city scribe, who would inscribe the reported person's name onto clay tablets called 'ostracas'. No proof of annoyance required. After a certain amount of ostracas, the reported person would be put on trial.

2. Such was what befell Socrates (who's scribe was Sophocles). If anything, the trial and ostracism suffered by Socrates tells us that he (and so could we too) was victim to direct democracy.

If everybody thinks you're bad, then so you are.

3. Socrates was not executed. He took arsenic. There goes another great mind.

4. Hart is the most interesting legal jurist to me thus far, a realist and a positivist, though at best, mildly contradictory with himself.