Hobson v. Hobbes

[Fred Shapiro]

When I search Hein Online, an excellent database containing the full text
of virtually all major law reviews back to the 1800s, I find 15 articles
employing the term "Hobbesian choice" dating back to 1976.  These articles
do not seem to be misusing the term for "Hobson's choice."  The meaning of
"Hobbesian choice" is nicely explained in a recent article in the Summer
2003 issue of Tulsa Law Review:

...what is clearly a Hobson's choice actually may have been made in the
context of a nasty and short Hobbesian choice within an unforgiving range
of brutish options.

The reference here is to Thomas Hobbes's famous quotation about the "life
of man" being "nasty, brutish, and short."  This may be an example of a
thinker being remembered for a single quotation, as when the adjective
"Shermanesque" is used to evoke General Sherman's statement refusing a
Presidential draft.

Bryan Garner is the dean of legal usage authorities, but in this instance
he appears to be mistaken.  At least two of the three examples of
"Hobbesian choice" he gives in his Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage do not
appear to be malapropisms for "Hobson's choice."

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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