Do unto others before they do unto you.
“I’m not sure I have a clear, discernible philosophy,” she said, sounding lame, hating her answer, knowing it disappointed him.
“If you were a judge,” he asked, giving her a second chance, “what moral and ethical framework would you bring to the courtroom?”
She bought time by finishing her Cuban coffee, feeling the caffeine rush. She needed to wing it, to spin bullshit into gold. Wasn’t that a large measure of lawyering? She’d won moot court at Stanford by keeping her poise and cleverly answering the unexpected question, but just now, she lost her concentration. Her mind flashed back to Max and the way he looked last night, how desperate he seemed about the case.
“ This is more important than you know.”
Why? And why wouldn’t he tell her more? Sure, the case was important. Jesus, nearly three hundred people had died. Damage claims could exceed half a billion dollars. But that’s why every airline carries massive amounts of insurance. Other than a quick spurt of adverse publicity from a megabucks verdict if Atlantica lost the case, what was the crisis?
Regaining her focus, Lisa was aware of Justice Truitt staring at her, waiting for her answer. “I’d just call them the way I saw them,” she said, using the sports cliche, falling deeper into the pit she had dug. The look on his face told her he was dissatisfied.
“Let’s try it this way,” he said, patiently. “What’s your view of Calvinism?”
She forced herself to focus. That she could be sitting here, in this majestic building, being asked to judge the work of a sixteenth-century French theologian struck her as both quaint and oddly moving. Sam Truitt, a man whose own words would be studied and critiqued by scholars a century from now, actually sought her opinion.
And I have none.
Oh, she could recite Calvin’s belief in the ultimate power of the moral law. She could ace any test on Aquinas or Aristotle, Bacon or Bentham. She was smart with what Max derisively called “book learning.”
But beneath it, she had no core, no body of beliefs that shaped her. She was an empty vessel, and realizing it, she suddenly felt chilled and frighteningly alone.
The justice waited for her reply. The easiest course would be to agree with his well-known written work. But she knew that he hated bootlickers. She needed to get back on track, back to the job she had promised Max she would do.
Oh Max, what have you gotten me into? I can’t hack it here.
Struggling to control her emotions, she pushed away the anxiety and the dread. “You probably don’t agree,” she said, haltingly, “but I’ve never thought that there is a natural law arising independent of governments. I take the view that all moral obligations are artificially realized, imposed by governments.”
“Aha!” he said, rising to the challenge, and in fact rising out of his chair and beginning to pace in front of the credenza. “You’re with Hobbes! You’re a bloody Royalist.”
“He was more realistic than Calvin,” she said. “Hobbes understood that moral obligations require laws, not the goodwill of men. It’s the sovereign that sets the rules, not our own consciences.”
She gave him a half smile and cocked her head. In another setting, it would have been flirtatious. Here, in the midst of a polemical quarrel that Cromwell and Charles the First might have had, if they spoke at all, it was an intellectual challenge.
“I think you have it backward,” he said. “‘We, the people-’“
“To coin a phrase,” she interrupted, beginning to feel more comfortable in the ebb and flow of a dialectic debate she was prepared to win or lose, as the situation required.
He laughed and continued. “The people give the government its rules, but those rules arise from natural laws. Take the Decalogue of Exodus. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not bear false witness…”
Thou shall not commit adultery.
Funny how that popped into her head as she watched the judge-her judge-stalk around the perimeter of his chambers, a smaller stage than in Cambridge. He had the enthusiasm of a young boy and the wisdom of philosopher. Not to mention the body of an athlete and the easy grin of a man who finds the world amusing.
A damned intoxicating combination in the person of Samuel Adams Truitt. If only you weren’t married, if only this weren’t a job.
Truitt carried on for a while, attacking Hobbes for his view that government could prescribe an official religion and ban all others, which she admitted was a mistake.
“A mistake this Court unanimously followed in 1892,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “when it held that the government can prohibit the exercise of religions other than Christianity. Four years later, the Court upheld laws prohibiting blacks from riding in the same railroad cars with whites. The decisions were wrong because they violated the natural law, as codified in our Constitution. Under Calvin, citizens can resist immoral laws because the sovereign is beholden to the natural law.”
“But who determines what the natural law encompasses?” she asked. “In the 1870s, the Supreme Court said it was the ‘law of the creator’ that women be barred from becoming lawyers. These days, a lunatic in Florida says God tells him to kill a doctor who performs abortions. Does he have the right to ignore the lesser law of the government?”
“No, because the most basic natural law of all is not to kill.”
And so it went, teacher and student, judge and clerk, man and woman, traveling through the centuries on the magic carpet of their mutual knowledge, Truitt noting that being “endowed with certain rights by their Creator” came from Calvin, Lisa responding that the “pursuit of happiness” came from Hobbes.
She was focused now and ready to impress the justice with her erudition on a number of subjects, all of which interested him, she knew from her research.
I’m rallying. I think he likes me.
Truitt sat down again, and they spoke easily for another forty minutes, Lisa working into the conversation a cross section of popular culture. She mentioned novels that moved her, films that resonated, and rock music she loved, the songs invariably stemming from Truitt’s era. She moved the conversation toward the American musical theater and why didn’t they write shows like Guys and Dolls anymore? He agreed, telling her he had acted, though not very well, in a college production of the show about a thousand years ago.
“You must have been a wonderful Sky Masterson,” she said.
“Actually, I was Big Jule.”
“No!” she said, feigning surprise. She’d already seen the yearbook photo of young Sam, brawny in a gangster’s pinstriped double-breasted suit with exaggerated lapels and enough shoulder padding for an offensive lineman. He was hoisting Sky Masterson up by his somewhat narrower lapels, holding him two feet off the stage floor with one hand. “I really would have thought you’d have the romantic lead.” She blushed, her face seeming as red as her hair. “Oh… I didn’t mean…” The more she stammered, the redder she became, a trick that required holding her breath, or at least not inhaling while she spoke. “I’m sorry, I mean… If I said anything inappropriate…”
“No. That’s all right. I was just the biggest guy in the University Thespians. It was either play the heavy or haul the scenery around.”
She quickly regained the composure she had really never lost. The blushing, stuttering episode had bee i rehearsed in front of a mirror just as Sam Truitt had rehearsed “Luck Be a Lady” so many years ago. It had seemed to her that being too polished, too poised, might come off as artificial and, well… rehearsed. So the momentary slip had the dual purpose of making her seem human and letting him know she found him attractive. I like her, Sam Truitt thought. She’s bright and beautiful, articulate and interesting, but beyond all that… I like her. Obviously, she can do the work. And she’d be fun to have around.
If only she weren’t so damned sexy.
“Is there anything you want to ask me?” Truitt said.