Todd Zywicki of The Volokh Conspiracy is wondering about the origins of the term “Beyond the Pale”. He notes that a Pale is a collection of boundary sticks, so its origins lie in the marking of territory. As every Irish schoolboy knows (this former Irish schoolboy, at any rate), the Pale was the area of English influence in Ireland prior to the Elizabethan plantations. Though widely settled by the Normans in the early part of the milennium, by the Tudor period the force of English rule in Ireland did not stretch reliably outside an area around Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow. (Perhaps a little further.) The plantations, which sowed the seeds for the present conflict, originated in land-grants by Queen Elizabeth to rectify that situation.

The phrase comes up in connection with Al Gore’s recent speech on Iraq, which was pilloried by Michael Kelly in the Washington Post the other day. Todd says “Beyond the Pale” seems “a reasonable characterization of Vice-President Gore’s remarks (at least as related by Mr. Kelly).” As Mark Kleiman and Tim Noah show, the article is in fact a disgrace, and Gore’s position on Iraq is not inconsistent or outrageous. The Volokh folks may want to take advantage of the “at least as related by…” escape hatch. It seems to me that it might be Kelly, rather than Gore, who’s on the wrong side of the fence.