"If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause"

The words of Charles Morgan offer a wry commentary on the nature of modern law and bureaucracy as opposed to the clarity and absoluteness associated with the ancient laws epitomized by the Ten Commandments. Morgan conjures an image of Moses, the archetypal lawgiver, not as a prophet standing on Sinai with tablets of stone, but as a product of elite legal education and political apprenticeship in Washington. In this vision, the commandments, known for their succinct and categorical prohibitions ("Thou shalt not kill", etc.), would instead become complex legal instruments, adorned with exceptions and legal safeguards.

Morgan’s comparison draws on the perception that institutions like Harvard Law School impress upon their students a bent towards nuance, caveats, and legalistic fine print. Working “on the Hill” further compounds this tendency, infusing legal realism and compromise, habits instilled by the necessities of legislative negotiation and political pragmatism. The pure declarations of right and wrong dissolve into a web of qualifications: “Thou shalt not kill, except in self-defense, wartime, or as prescribed by statutory law.” Thus, an “exception” or a “saving clause” is a hallmark of modern legislation, shielding drafters from rigid application or unforeseen consequences.

Underlying Morgan’s humor is a critique of a system that often sacrifices clarity and moral certainty in its pursuit of flexibility and technical precision. What is lost in the move from the stark, universal statements of the original commandments to the hedged and lawyerly language Morgan imagines, is not just simplicity, but perhaps also a sense of shared ethical commitment. The observation also hints at nostalgia for a time when rules seemed unambiguous and universally binding, contrasting sharply with the professional skepticism and contingency of modern legal work. Morgan’s words thus use satire to illuminate the distance between timeless moral imperatives and the often-murky reality of contemporary lawmaking.