Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [63]
My adversary, as pedantic as he might have been, brought home to me that I might simply be a cog in a massive wheel rather than Justice Man. The system functions, as I’ve earlier described, a little like an airline that overbooks seats. Airlines hope that not everyone who books passage shows up wanting to fly somewhere. Courts are like that. More trials are scheduled than can be logically dealt with, not enough time is assigned to any event on the docket, and when someone is told to do or not do something as part of the consequence for his or her crime, there is little or no follow-up. To continue the airline analogy, when everyone demands their day in court, the plane can’t fly. There are just not enough seats.
Some days I feel like the system provides excellent value to society. On other days, I feel like a factory worker on the assembly line, putting my one small part onto the big car of Justice—nothing handmade about this baby.
So if my opponent felt it was his duty, his requirement, to do Justice, to ask the same questions repeatedly, then my obligation was to make sure they were asked properly and that our little notion of Justice was fulfilled. At least I think that’s what I thought. It is all something of a blur now. My concentration was lost in the endless droning from my adversary.
As much as Justice, in the best Benjamin Franklin tradition, might have been present in that courtroom, Tranquillity had thrown its things into a suitcase and had run away as fast as its little legs could carry it.
Maybe I need a mantra.
I will not strangle other lawyers. I will not strangle other lawyers.
I Fought Irony, and Irony Won
Justice and irony must be first cousins. They both have a way of sneaking up on you. Just when you think you have the whole notion of fulfilling your responsibilities to others down, Justice walks up behind you, slaps you across the back of the head, and scolds you for letting everyone down.
{ Without justice courage is weak.}
You may remember my pro bono project from an earlier chapter. Well, Justice seemed just the week to dedicate to this endeavor. For an instant, I thought that my dedication to this Justice-based initiative might even have found favor with Franklin himself, for in the middle of the week of Justice I had a metaphorical victory for my efforts.
The catalyst for the idea had been a couple who had been wronged by a government agency. They came to me for help, but given what I do for a living, there was little that I could do for them. I did the best I could, making several recommendations about not-for-profit organizations that might be of some assistance, all the while knowing that these were Band-Aid solutions. Thus, I formulated the idea for our Pro Bono Association.
As I said, in the middle of the week dedicated to Justice, I saw some cosmic hand at work. I was working late in my office again when I ran into the couple who had been my inspiration. They were excited to see me. The husband told me that one of my suggestions had helped and, in the end, saved him $4,000.
As I congratulated him, I thought of Ben and his dictate not to omit our duties and was pleased with the symbolic victory in a week dedicated to Justice.
I should have known that Benjamin Franklin would have scorned symbolic victories. The next day, there were to be no victories, symbolic or otherwise.
Let me begin my tale of Justice woe by giving you a little background. My boss had been away for three weeks. In an office of six prosecutors, the loss of one can cause significant workload strains. One of my colleagues was also out on extended sick leave. Meanwhile, I was under a looming deadline to prepare a legal brief in response to an appeal of a murder conviction. Heaped on that were the regular files, a number of deadlines for filings of documents in future trials, and several requests for advice from law enforcement agencies.
That would have been a busy, if typical, week. But in that week of Justice, nothing