In the years leading up to July 4, 1776, Phillis Wheatley bid the imaginations of the American Revolutionaries to spring open by shouting: “Imagination! Who can sing thy force?” Wheatley defined the imagination as the leader of the mental train, and, according to Ciceronian principles, she demonstrated that the imagination is the singular facilitator of human action. Nevertheless, the concept of the imagination remains an underdeveloped topic in the legal field, even while it reigns over the decision making processes of all U.S. legislators, administrators, and judges.

For over two centuries Wheatley’s exposition of the imagination laid dormant in America, even while the “originalists” called for the legal application of such founding concepts. On September 21, 2023, however, the imagination properly invaded Professor Warren Binford’s opening event of the ongoing Testimony series at the University of Colorado, Anschutz: a multi-disciplinary art as advocacy symposium Advocating for Children in Migration. This event followed the publication of Hear My Voice/Escucha Mi Voz, a children’s book featuring statements of children held in migrant detention facilities compiled by Professor Binford. This book was illustrated by several artists, won several awards, and inspired yet still more artistic projects including popular, folk, and classical music, dance choreography, murals, other visual artworks, and even an episode of South Park.

Yet, even while these artistic bursts of inspiration began to grow, their impotence upon the legal and medical professionals at the symposium were manifest. The legal and medical panelists generally treated the artist panels as a political propaganda piece, or a form of therapy to treat the artists’ own grief, rather than as a legitimate muse to inspire legal and medical professionals to innovate solutions to the immigration crisis. The blindness of the professional class to the force of their own imaginations was obvious.

Human beings, imperfect as we are, rarely start out on key, but over time we can improve. Binford’s compilations, symposiums, and events could be a step toward the renewal of the American imagination in professional circles that may inspire us to innovate solutions to the immigration crisis. This article is dedicated to the observation of the stumbling starts of the American professional class toward their ultimate realization that they too are subject to the vivacious force of the imagination over the faultiness of Rationalism.

KJ