Alexander offered a meal of gold
The Supreme Court in the case we are reporting today mentioned the story of a fanciful meeting between Alexander the Great, and the legendary King Katzya, ruler of a fabulous land beyond the dark mountain to illustrate how morality informs the subjects' presentation of their disputes and the King's morality in resolving them.
The visiting Alexander bypassed Katzya's gold and silver but wished to see 'your customs, your behaviour, and how you administer justice'. The conqueror then watched King Katzya heard a case between the buyer and the seller of a field in which hidden treasure had been found. Each disclaimed the treasure, not having bargained for it in the sale. After hearing their briefs, the king found that one man had a son and other a daughter. He arranged their betrothal to one another and bestowed the trove on them. Alexander, laughing, was asked how he would have ruled on such a case in his own land.
“I would have executed both of them and confiscated the treasure". So King Katzya set out a meal all of gold. When Alexander objected that he did not eat gold, the King exclaimed, with an imprecation: "Why then do you love it so?" He then asked whether the sun shone and the rain fell in Alexander's country and whether there were livestock there. On hearing that there were, he exclaimed, again with an imprecation, "Why then it is only by the desert of those cattle that you survive.
Judicial Review would therefore have to be the ever sustaining appreciation of the 'desert' of all beings in nature and all orders of nature to the possibility of human life and the need to avoid at any cost the high probabilities of not only the extinction of the species but destruction of the rich and wonderful variety of Natures productions. In other words it is more urgent to see judicial review as one of the most immediate means of generating concern for life beyond us and orders sustaining us, in the minds of people wielding economic and social power.