Three doors down, Walker Eliot scowled at his computer screen. As he’d started writing the motion to dismiss Parkwell from the case, he’d looked over the list of plaintiffs’ counsel. Macey’s firm was there, of course, but they’d enlisted public interest groups to help: MALDEF, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Earthjustice. The names caused Walker a momentary pang. Nothing personal, guys, he thought. It’s just business.
Now, halfway in, he was realizing that the most straightforward understanding of the law was against them, and that hurt more. Not because he thought it damaged their chances of winning. He didn’t care what happened to Parkwell, and anyway, he was confident he could find a way around the problems. He could call the needed law into existence, do it with nothing but ink and imagination, like a cartoon character who sketches a door on a blank wall and ducks inside. But there were some costs to reshaping the world like that. And anyway, he asked himself, what’s the point? I find some esoteric reason why this case doesn’t quite fit into the doctrinal category it seemed to, and the law becomes more complicated, more intricate, less able to guide behavior. His argument would be correct, of course. The professors would enjoy it; it would provide grist for law review articles. But Walker was beginning to suspect that complexity for its own sake was not a virtue. There was, he thought, little beauty in it, and it was with a smattering of distress that he turned to the task. This suggested that happiness might require something more than nice shoes. “Gah,” said Walker, who loathed epiphanies.
He steeled himself. It’s just business. I am an advocate. I do not appear here as amicus curiae. I am no friend of the court.
“Hey,” said Larry Angstrom, knocking on the open door by way of introduction. “Congratulations. You did it.”
“What did I do?”
“We won Vendstar. Unanimous.” He waved a sheaf of papers. “The slip opinion’s just come out. Your brief, buddy. Your brief is now the law.”
Walker brightened. “I’m sure it was your masterful oral argument,” he muttered, that being what one said in such circumstances. He took the opinion and began to read, and what had been a bad morning became worse.
Walker had been happy with the Vendstar brief. It had been a true test. Jennifer Caputo, whose presence he had sensed in the ranks of the opposition, had come back with the arguments he’d expected. Morgan Siler filed a reply; battle was joined. The minds of the former clerks struggled for mastery, feinting, parrying, conjuring cases to do their bidding. It had been exhilarating, the most intellectually demanding project Walker had worked on. And if his position hadn’t been the most obvious, that only added to the challenge, like dueling left-handed, or running a race with weights tied to your ankles.
That he had actually prevailed, Walker thought, was a testament to the ingenious subtleties of his argument, its ability to beat back every objection. But as he read the opinion, he realized that something quite different had happened. He and Jennifer had been fighting it out in the rarefied air of theory, and the court was writing doctrine. It had taken Walker’s argument, but without the grace and intricacy. What had been an elegant reconceptualization of the cases, a dance across perspectives, had been condensed into a flat statement of the law. And put that way, Walker had to admit, it was far from convincing. Law could bend, and often enough to support any outcome in any particular case, but only if you were very careful with your words. One misstep, and what was going on was more than bending.
Walker spread a hand in the air, regarding his fingers. The law of class actions was beautiful in its complexity, studded with dusty gems like the wings of a butterfly, and he’d enjoyed exploring it. He’d even enjoyed his artful refinement. But this result—he wasn’t enjoying it at all. His touch, which had been healing, was now destructive; he saw jeweled powder on his fingertips, the law limping and damaged.
Idiot judges, thought Walker, writing something like this. Idiot law clerks, misunderstanding the brief, not doing the research themselves.
Idiot Larry Angstrom, arguing it the way he wanted and not the way I wrote it. All of them doing their jobs, and I mine, and what’s the result? This wound on the body of law, which once I swore to protect, this crack in the doctrinal edifice. The sort of mistake I used to spend my time fixing.
What would Harold say? That the law did not exist itself in any way he need worry about. It existed only to serve human interests, and he’d made it a little bit better able to serve the interests that were ultimately paying for his shoes. Walker shook his head.
“Aren’t you happy?” Angstrom asked.
“This isn’t what I wrote,” Walker said.
“It’s better.”
“It’s not. There’s an integrity to legal materials. You can’t just do what you want with them.”
“Looks like you can,” Larry Angstrom said. “You can change the law.”
“I don’t change the law,” Walker said. “I just give you a path to a particular result. What I wrote was right. It was good law. What the law wants to be.”
Angstrom laughed. “Good law for the client, maybe. It’s what you want it to be.”
“No,” said Walker, but he doubted. Had he imposed his will, however unknowingly; had he convinced himself of an untruth? Had he forced himself on the law?
He put the thought from his mind. Maybe the court was right; maybe it was taking the law in a better direction. Well, there’d been a gap in the published opinions. The Fifth Circuit hadn’t yet decided this precise issue. But he heard Justice Arlen’s voice. There are no gaps in the law, only answers we have not yet found. The opinion could be called clever, but it wasn’t beautiful. It didn’t cohere with the rest of the doctrine. It didn’t show the law in its best light. In the last analysis, Walker had to admit, it just didn’t ring true.
No. His argument had been ingenious. As phrased, it could have been reconciled with existing law. A strain, a sprain, the sort of thing that could be walked off in subsequent cases. The ice of a sober second look would bring down the swelling. And that, he realized now, was what he’d been hoping for. But the way the court had written it, this was a break, no doubt about it. A clean split from the other federal circuits. This would require professional treatment, attention at higher levels.
Cert bait, his clerk’s mind said. This one’s going up. And Arlen would see it, would see what he had become. Shame overcame him. Oathbreaker, Walker thought; defiler. And more: criminal. I broke the law.
Walker looked at his shoes. He pulled one foot free and, frowning, examined the sock. There at the heel, bare skin was showing through the cashmere. “Gah,” he said again, this time with feeling.