Pepper was in a sweat. She had an opinion to write, and since it proclaimed the right of criminals to sue gun manufacturers when their holdup weapons misfire in the middle of a crime, it needed to be good. Really, really good.
Her clerk, Sandoval, had offered to do “a draft” of it for her. Some justices let their clerks do pretty much all the “drafting” of their written opinions. But Pepper was determined to do her own even if it meant pulling all-nighters. She’d had enough problems in the media already without reading a snippy item in the Washington Post about how Judge Lightweight was relying on her clerks to do her heavy lifting. She didn’t doubt Sandoval’s discretion or loyalty, but clerks were a gossipy bunch who these days talked to reporters and authors and sometimes even wrote their own clerk-and-tell books.
After ten p.m. on what was shaping up to be her second sleepless night, Pepper was at her desk trying to figure out how to make the Swayle opinion sound like something Moses left behind on Mount Sinai along with the commandments. There was a knock on the door and in walked Justice Ishiguro “Mike” Haro.
“Busy?” he said.
It was a curious statement to make to someone who was in her office after ten p.m., looking like hell while staring desperately at a computer screen.
“Kind of. I’m working on the Swayle opinion,” Pepper said. “It’s been a while since I…”
“That’s why I came by.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“Thought you could use some help.”
This struck Pepper as falling somewhere between a breach of etiquette and an outright insult. Though new here, she was pretty certain justices didn’t go around offering to help each other write opinions.
“I think I’ve got it under control. But thanks for the offer.”
Justice Haro stood awkwardly. He was in his early forties but looked ten years younger and had about him a mild air of contemptuousness, as though the world did not measure up to his standards.
“I liked the way you gave it to Santamaria at the conference,” he said. “Pompous prick.”
Eager as Pepper was for peer approval, collegiality predicated on a shared dislike of a third colleague was off to a false start.
“I shouldn’t have run my mouth like that,” she said. “I wrote him an apology.” She made a mental note to do that after Haro left.
“You don’t owe him an apology,” Haro said. “Not after the things he’s said about you. And not just in print.”
Was this an invitation to say, What things?
“I better get back to this.”
“Do you like wine?”
“Generally. Not right now.” Something made her add, “I’m more of a beer girl.”
“I have eight thousand bottles in my cellar.”
“Sounds like quite some cellar.”
“Yes, it is. Maybe I’ll show it to you sometime.”
Haro turned to leave. As he did, he said, “By the way, Mortimer isn’t the key to this case. But I’ll take care of it when your draft circulates.”
Pepper wondered if the woman who’d poured out her ex-husband’s wine and replaced it with grape juice was available, and went back to her Augean stable.
She finished the opinion late the next day and sent it out for comments by the four other justices in the majority. She felt as though she were back in school, hoping to find an “A” in red ink at the top of the returned term paper.
One morning a few days later she logged on to SupremeNet, the Court’s secure Intranet, and found the opinion in her inbox. There was no grade on it, but it was full of comments by the justices. Next to one section she found a “Good-DH.” Chief Justice Hardwether was not known to be liberal with his compliments, so she purred to find this. The pleasure was short-lived. On the next page, he had struck out a line in which she had used the Texas phrase “more confused than a cow on Astroturf”-a sentiment she had felt condign enough in a case like Swayle-and written, “Let’s try to keep it dignified.” Ouch.
When she came to the centerpiece of her argument citing Mortimer v. Great Lakes Suction, she found that every line- indeed, the entire page-had been struck out. In the margin was a note: “Mortimer is a rotting branch-see attachment. IH.” [19] The attachment consisted of twelve pages in which Justice Haro essentially took over and rewrote her opinion from top to bottom. It hinged on a case called Kozinko v. Mixmaster, in which, as Justice Haro eloquently explained, “the South Dakota Supreme Court rightly held that liability was not in quem pro tanto automatically waived simply because the blender was being used to manufacture methamphetamine, a federally prohibited controlled substance. Indeed, the very absence of legality in that case, pari passu, argues convincingly on behalf of Swayle’s assertion of denial of equal protection.”
Pepper read it several times, each time getting madder, but in the end conceded that it was, alas, a better argument than hers. Nonetheless, she typed KISS MY ASS on the top of the attachment, closed the file, and went to the gym to cool down. When she got back from the gym, she reopened the file, deleted KISS MY ASS, and typed, yes, right-thank you, and closed the file and e-mailed it back to the Clerk of the Court and went home to have a good cry, only to find a court summons in her mailbox relating to Buddy’s breach of contract suit. It sure was great, being on the Supreme Court. But there was better yet to come.
The Court was due to render its Swayle decision from the bench on Friday. On Tuesday morning, Washington awoke to a riveting story in the Washington Times:
The Supreme Court is expected to rule Friday in favor of a bank robber who is suing the manufacturer of the gun he used in the commission of the crime because it failed to fire when he tried to shoot the arresting officer.
According to a source within the Court, the justices have voted 5-4 in favor of the plaintiff, one Jimmy James Swayle, a career criminal currently serving 25 years in federal prison. The deciding vote was cast by the newest justice on the high bench, former TV personality Pepper Cartwright. Justice Cartwright, the source noted, has made “an already polarized court even more antipodal.”
The word means “diametrically opposite.”
It was a breathtaking leak, even by the standards of Washington, DC, where everything short of actual nuclear launch code sequences routinely turns up on the front page of the paper. Pepper’s clerk, Sandoval, reached her at home just before seven a.m. to alert her to it. An hour later, two Court marshals knocked on her door to announce that they had instructions “to provide for your security, ma’am. Orders of the Chief Justice.”
By the time she had arrived at the marble palace, Chief Justice Hardwether had already sent a SupremeNet e-mail to all the justices deploring the leak, apologizing to Justice Cartwright “on behalf of the entire Court,” announcing that he would initiate an internal investigation, and hinting that he might even bring in the FBI. This last part did not sit well with various justices, unleashing a torrent of furious postings on J-Blog, the justices’ Intranet chat room.
Emphatically resent implication my chambers might have had anything to do with this tawdry affair and shall in no way cooperate. Strong letter follows. SS [Silvio Santamaria]
Dismaying as the episode may be, I find even more outrageous the imputation that suspicion should be so casually and widely applied here. What happened to Equal Protection? RR [Ruth Richter]
Why don’t you just install a polygraph machine in the Great Hall? IH [Ishiguro Haro]
Quis custodiet… sigh. [20]MG [Mo Gotbaum]
Come on, everyone-let’s all take a deep breath and calm down. PP [Paige Plympton]
Reading them, Pepper was struck by the fact that most of them seemed most outraged about being subjected to an investigation, not the leak.
Outside, the world at large was howling not for the head of the leaker but for-hers. The article had managed to focus all the rage over the decision on Pepper, not on the other four justices who had joined her. The blogosphere and airwaves were in meltdown. By noon, the first calls to IMPEACH CARTWRIGHT had been posted and a crowd had gathered in front of the Court. A candlelight vigil was duly announced.
In the midst of the storm of outrage, Pepper’s secretary announced that her grandfather was on the phone. This was the moment she had been dreading above all. She had even sent him and Juanita round-trip business-class tickets to Cancún, Mexico, and paid for a suite at a fancy hotel (with casino-JJ loved to gamble) for the express purpose of getting him out of the country when Swayle hit the news. With any luck he’d be in the casino when CNN reported the decision. Now this.
“Hello, JJ,” she said.
“Is this true?” he said.
She sighed. “Yep.”
There was a long silence, not even a pwwttt.
“Did you call just to not say anything?” Pepper said. “Why don’t you just cuss me out and get it over with?”
“I just don’t see how you coulda…” JJ said. “That coulda been me that son of a bitch was aiming at.”
“I know. But there was this case called Kozinko v. Mixmaster where…” Her heart wasn’t quite in it.
“Is that why you sent us those tickets?”
She drew in a breath to lie, but couldn’t. The air came back out, unpolluted by mendacity. “Yep,” she said.
Another long silence. “I know most everyone who goes to Washington loses their way sooner or later. But I didn’t think it happened this fast.”
“It’s a complicated case, JJ. The Second Circuit found that-”
Pwwttt. “No, Pepper. It ain’t complicated.” Silence. Pepper couldn’t think what to say. JJ said, “Guess I’m gonna hang up now,” and he did.
A GRIM-LOOKING HAYDEN CORK had brought in the news yesterday morning, having just gotten a whip count from the White House Congressional Liaison. The Senate was about to pass the Presidential Term Limit Amendment, 77-23.
“Apparently the Swayle vote was the final nail,” he reported.
Graydon Clenndennynn had been yanked back from another remunerative negotiation, persuading Russia to equip its domestic security forces with U.S.-made Taser guns, there being increasing need in Moscow these days to deal with a restive citizenry.
Hayden said to the President, “We’re going to kill him if we keep putting him through this kind of jet lag.” But Clenndennynn showed up in the Oval Office looking crisp and ready to lend wisdom and eminence to yet another presidential emergency.
“I’m not sure I see what the crisis is,” Graydon said, setting down his china coffee cup. “I was under the impression you didn’t want to run again.”
“I don’t,” the President said gloomily.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Because now I’ll have to run. To show them what I think of their ridiculous amendment.”
“Why don’t you just denounce them and be done with it?”
“I denounce the Congress all the time. Now, if I don’t run, everyone will think it’s because I was intimidated or scared off. I won’t have that. Because it’s not the truth.”
“All right. Then in that case, run.”
“Graydon,” the President said, “stop pretending to be obtuse. I don’t want to run. Everything I’ve tried to do has been predicated on being in office for only one term. There’s a principle at stake here.”
How many times had Graydon heard that hoary asseveration. “Then don’t run,” he said with a fleck of petulance.
“Hayden,” the President said, “would you please call Andrews and have a jet fueled to take Mr. Clenndennynn back to Moscow?”
“Donald,” Graydon said, “there are times when a leader has to choose-”
“If this is one of your what-would-Winston-do lectures,” the President said, “I don’t want to hear it. I’m not in the mood for Churchillian wisdom today, thank you.”
“-between the between the unpalatable and the poisonous. All right. The amendment is an insult, a slap across the face administered by a bunch of self-dealing scoundrels. So what else is new? You’ve been warring with the Congress since day one. All I’m saying is, you’re perfectly right. If you don’t run now, it’ll look like… cowardice. That you’re throwing in the towel.”
“So I’m damned either way. Is that it?”
“Sorry. Look,” Graydon said, “if it’s the prospect of serving another term that’s got you tied up in knots, I wouldn’t worry too much on that score. You certainly have my vote. But I didn’t pass huge crowds here on my way in from Andrews chanting, ‘Four more years.’ Where are we in the polls, Hayden?”
“Low thirties,” Hayden said. “We had some bounce from Cartwright, but Swayle eliminated that.”
“How could the Court have ruled for that… Oh, well.” Graydon sighed. “Supreme Court justices almost always disappoint. Remember what Truman said when they asked him if he had any disappointments. ‘Yes, and they’re both sitting on the Supreme Court.’ Well. There we are. Point is, sir, I think you can safely run for reelection and expect to be back on your front porch in Wapa-however it’s pronounced-by the following January 21.” [21]
“It’s too cold in Wapakoneta in January to sit on the porch,” the President said, “but I appreciate the sentiment. Well, this is going to be one heck of a queer campaign.”
THE SENATE VOTED the next day, 78-22, in favor of the Presidential Term Limit Amendment. Having cleared both the House and the Senate, the measure would now go to the states to be ratified. Getting three-quarters of state legislatures to agree on something can take a long time. It took four years (1947 to 1951) to ratify the amendment limiting presidents to two terms; but lowering the voting age to eighteen took a mere one hundred days to pass (during the Vietnam War). The punditariat [22] predicted that given President Vanderdamp’s unpopularity, the amendment stood a good chance of being briskly ratified. They confidently predicted that Vanderdamp would not seek reelection. He might be politically inept, they said, but he was not a fool, nor one to seek further humiliation. He would finish out his term and slink back to Wapawhatever with his tail between his legs.
A solemn-faced Hayden Cork, making a rare personal appearance in the White House pressroom, announced that the President would shortly address the nation from the Oval Office.
<a l:href="#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Somewhat florid legal term for a prior ruling or law considered likely to be overturned.
<a l:href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Juvenal: the full quote is “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes,” meaning “Who shall guard the guardians themselves?” Generally invoked when figures in authority make a hash of things.
<a l:href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a> The day after the new president is inaugurated on January 20. Until the 1930s, presidents were sworn in on March 4. The new date was chosen by the Congress for the probability of its being frigid and miserable.
<a l:href="#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Collective term for the one-seventh of the population of Washington, DC, who opine on political matters on television.