TO WIT: HALFWAY HOME
I am above all else a person of passion, and to that professionally troublesome affliction I incessantly and deliriously yield. When matters touch upon that base and basic instinct, I do not plead for my clients, I bleed for them. I do not pray for their relief, I pray for their deliverance, and it should come as no surprise to my more stable colleagues that I accept defeat in such instances with all the philosophical good grace of a scorned liberal.
Such a crusade caused me recently to appear before a judge in another county who fully believed that he was THE LAW. He had made up his mind well in advance of trial as to the appropriate outcome and he was not about to be dissuaded of his perch by some foreign lawyer armed only with excessive zeal, a brash though fetching manner, and 150 years of supportive, uncontroverted precedent. When the defense rested, His Honor called us both to sidebar and handed out copies of his opinion, no doubt written at the speed of light, for in it the real matter had simply ceased to exist. That I was so taken aback was, to some degree, my own fault, for I had not previously been aware of his famous opinion of some years earlier in which he had declared the doctrine of stare decisis to be an unconstitutional infringement upon his right to freedom of expression.
The effect of this particular setback to my psyche was typically cataclysmic. Whereas before I was sailin’, now I was frightfully becalmed. I stopped reading my mail, returning my phone calls, answering my correspondence. In short, for a time, I took on all the appearances of a successful, busy lawyer.
I should know better than to be so prone to passion, for I first learned of its corrosive effect upon the legal mind in law school, at the hands, the mind and mouth of one Professor Alleshazy. Next to the Dean, passion was his favorite anathema, and he would preach upon it endlessly. “It has no place in your thoughts”, he would suggest, and we would listen. “It is of use only to concert musicians and hookers”, he would argue, and we took note. “In his profession, you will never be the former, and only rarely the latter”, he would roar with clenched fist swinging madly skyward, shaking Blackstone from repose. “Be
Dispassionate or be damned”, he would bellow fervently, collapsing thereafter in a quivering, spasmodic heap at the base of the podium, while we broke into a frenzied fit of coldly analytical cheering.
As with most professors, I paid him no heed, and thus brought to my fledging practice the ardor of the uninitiated. For a while, while the romantic weight of law school still sat squarely on my shoulders, the object of my passion was crystal clear. Like Justice Black, I carried a small copy of the Constitution in my pocket, always alert to a spontaneous outbreak of Constitutional debate. I was on the road of Brandeis and Cardozo then, and they were close to my heart. Somewhere along that road, though I must have missed a sign, for I have long since settled into a small town general practice, and I haven’t heard a word from Louis or Benjamin for years.
Amidst the title exams and fall down cases that otherwise occupy my time, I lapse into mental pause of late and wonder why I have spent so much passion on such a harmless career. I am not now a likely candidate to sway by force of passion the larger course of human events. No candre of hated breaths await my every word, and I expect I’ll pass along uncited and unseen. The nature of my living permits me to leave in my wake only ordinary contributions to smaller worlds. Before too long though, some poor old downtrodden widow will wander totally bereft into my office with an eviction notice to cheer me up and spark anew the fire. Until then, for passion’s sake, I will take up the violin. It seems a reasonable choice, considering the alternative.
© 1980 – S. Sponte, Esq.