In aiming to do whatever any of us can to help the world we inhabit together, maintaining suppleness of heart and mind could be a benefit. As with keeping the body limber, this might seem effortless among the young and be of increasing difficulty as any of us grow older.

Richard Posner, a legal scholar, considers the U.S. Constitution itself must be bendable so that it does not break. In his book, “Not a Suicide Pact,” Posner assessed such flexibility to be particularly imperative in times of national emergency.

In Posner’s view, U.S. people found ourselves in a national emergency following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And Posner supposed we should accept “marginal adjustments” to the Constitution in practice in order to cope with continuing threats from al-Qaeda.

Entertaining Posner’s treatise is emotionally taxing for me, as I do not take his assurances at face value. This is, after all, the same Richard Posner who wrote a learned article on “Legal Narratology.” In what I have read, a fascination with how to tell a story in a courtroom is all the rage in law schools today. I have to ask myself who is counseling prospective guardians of our freedoms to hew to the facts when propagating compelling fictions might yield a higher success rate in winning cases and, yes, a larger paycheck.

In our world today, we are now locked in to conditions of international emergency, as enough carbon emissions are in the atmosphere that we are assured of massive difficulties, no matter what we do and do not do now. And we should always remember the instructions we received as children in school fire drills, namely: First of all, do not panic.

Posner assured readers of his book he is “not a Chicken Little.” I quote from Wikipedia’s article on “Henny Penny” to say that Posner did not have a “mistaken belief that disaster … [could be] imminent.” Sept. 11 was an emergency for our nation, and so was Jan. 6. Nonetheless, I am not thus far satisfied Posner kept hysteria at bay in responding to emergency.

Mary H. Hall

South Hadley