Con Law (2 page)

‘You okay, Renée?’

A timid voice from below: ‘Unh-huh.’

‘Ronald? Darlene?’

‘We’re good, Professor. But how did you …?’

The other two men’s faces told him that either the alcohol or their egos would not allow a retreat. Book blamed it on the Alamo. No self-respecting Texan—or should he say, no self-respecting drunk Texan—would surrender without a fight. The wife-beater came at Book with the length of pipe; he stepped forward with his left foot and swung as if trying to hit a home run off a high fastball … Book ducked under the pipe swinging past his head and executed a spinning sweep, whipping his left leg against the back of the man’s leg and knocking his feet out from under him, then a ridge hand strike to the bridge of his nose as the man fell over backwards. He collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain and cupping his broken nose as blood gushed forth. Book spun to face the third man. ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ stood frozen over his buddies. He considered his options.

‘Don’t,’ Book said.

He didn’t.

The gunfire had brought a crowd out of the café and the sound of a distant siren. Ronald and Darlene would be safe, for now.
Book turned to his intern; she was crouched on the ground as if saying a final prayer. He bent down and took her shoulders and lifted her up. She seemed to be in a state of shock.

‘Renée, it’s okay. You’re safe now. I told you I would always protect you.’

He helped her onto the back seat of the big Harley. He swung a leg over and stood the bike upright. Renée leaned into him from behind and wrapped her arms tightly around his torso; he felt her body trembling.

‘Thought you’re a law professor?’ Ronald said.

‘I am.’

‘Never seen no professor fight like that.’

‘It’s the Comanche blood.’

Book shook hands with Ronald then fired up the engine, shifted into gear, and gunned the motorcycle west on the highway to Austin. He let out a war cry that would have made Crazy Horse proud.

‘Professor Bookman—’

‘Answer
the
question.’

‘But,
Professor—’

‘Ms. Edwards, do you or do you not have a constitutional right to take the pill?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You don’t care if you have a right to use contraceptives?’

‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m a lesbian.’

Book sighed. His mind offered up a list of biting retorts—not to her lesbianism, but to her lack of interest—but he decided against uttering a word. Even a tenured law professor had to be careful with class lectures these days, when every cell phone and laptop doubled as a video camera; this morning’s lecture might be that night’s viral YouTube video. So he turned from Ms. Edwards and searched the sea of faces for another female student who might care or at least be willing to answer his question in front of the other hundred students. Most had their heads ducked behind their laptops, assured that Professor Bookman would not use his classroom authority to humiliate them in front of their peers. The days of
law professors wearing bowties and suits—Book wore boots, jeans, and another Tommy Bahama T-shirt (
Nothing but Net
stenciled under a hammock strung between two palm trees)—and employing the Socratic method to browbeat their students were over. Students paying $30,000 a year (twice that at private schools) demanded a kinder, gentler law school experience. Consequently, Book prodded them to participate in the class debates, but he did not force it upon them. Although it seemed counter-intuitive for prospective lawyers, he knew it was not everyone’s nature to seek attention.

It was, however, Ms. Garza’s nature.

She sought attention. She demanded attention. She sat directly in front of Book on the front row to ensure his attention. She stuck her hand in the air and puffed her chest out proudly, not to show off her feminine attributes to her handsome professor but to display the message-of-the-day printed in big black letters on her white T-shirt:
IF I WANTED THE GOVERNMENT IN MY WOMB, I’D FUCK A SENATOR.
No doubt she had chosen her attire in honor of that day’s constitutional law topic as stated on the class syllabus: ‘The Right of Privacy and Women’s Reproductive Rights.’ Book admired Ms. Garza’s commitment to social justice, but after facing her (and her T-shirts) on the front row for fifty minutes four mornings each week for eight months, her hand always waving frantically, desperate for another opportunity to espouse her political views to the class, the new had worn off. But she remained his go-to student to ignite a class debate.

‘Ms. Garza, do you have a constitutional right to take the pill?’

‘You’re damn right I do.’

‘Why?’

‘Because in
Griswold v. Connecticut
, the Supreme Court found a right of privacy in the Bill of Rights—’

Book
held up an open hand. ‘Does the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—expressly mention a right of privacy?’

‘No. But the Court found a right of privacy in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights—’

‘
Penumbras?
What, Ms. Garza, is a penumbra?’

‘Uh … I’m not really sure.’

‘Look it up.’

While she typed on her laptop, Book sat on the front edge of his desk and surveyed the one hundred freshman students—‘1Ls’ in the vernacular, the first year of their transition from human being to lawyer almost complete—rising before him in the fan-shaped, theater-style seating in Classroom 2.138 at the University of Texas School of Law. They attended his constitutional law class, ‘Con Law’ as it was known in the curriculum catalog, only because it was a required course; they needed the class credit to earn a law degree. These students much preferred studying the nine million words of the tax code and regulations, for their lives would be lived among those words. Those legal dos and don’ts, rules and regulations borne of generous lobbying and conveniently painted in gray rather than black and white, allowed for a lawyer’s creativity.

Many a legal career had been forged in the gray margins of the law.

But not his career. He had never been attracted to the words defining capital gains. After one reading of the Constitution—4,543 words; 7,591 including the twenty-seven amendments—back when he was a 1L, he knew his legal life would be lived among the words of James Madison. He had fallen in love with the Constitution at age twenty-two and the affair continued to this day. ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’

How could you not love those words?

But try though he did—and he did try Monday through Thursday from 9:10
A.M.
until 10:00
A.M.
—he could not instill the same love for the Constitution in these profit-minded students. If the Constitution had a Facebook page, few of these students would ‘like’ it. Few would follow it on Twitter. Few seemed to even entertain such lofty legal ideals as liberty and justice these days. Those were concepts you read about in the casebooks, not rights you fought for in the real world. They were not the children of the civil rights era; they were the grandchildren. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four years old, they had grown up in an era of affluence and entitlement, beneficiaries of the fights fought before they were born. Consequently, they cared more about their job prospects upon graduation, most hoping to become well-paid corporate servants.

Who else could pay $1,000 an hour?

And that was the role law schools now played: farm teams for the major league law firms. ‘A’ students were valuable commodities in the law business. They were currency. The schools funneled the best and the brightest to the plush offices on the fiftieth floors of skyscrapers across the nation. In return, the law firms endowed chairs at the law schools, ensuring the curriculum would be shaped to further corporate interests, offering such classes as: Corporations; Corporate Finance; Corporate Governance; Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders; Federal Income Taxation of Corporations; Corporate and Securities Law and Transactions; Corporation Law, Finance, Securities, and Regulation; Mergers and Acquisitions; and, of course, White Collar Crime.

Even for this millennial generation, a law degree was viewed as their ticket in life. Most, those sons and daughters of the working class, chose law school because their parents had not. They
borrowed a hundred thousand dollars to finance a legal education at UT law school (twice that at Harvard law school) because a law degree still constituted a viable vehicle for social mobility in America, a way to get ahead. To be successful. To have a better life. Perhaps even to get rich.

Others, those sons and daughters of the one percent, simply needed a station in life, a place to be when they weren’t at the country club.

Only a few still came to law school with a desire to change the world. Like Ms. Garza here. She burned hot with political desire. She read off her laptop.

‘
Webster’s
defines penumbra as “the partial or imperfect shadow outside the complete shadow of an opaque body, such as a planet, where the light from the source of illumination is only partly cut off.”’

‘A shadow?’ Book said. ‘Let me get this straight: the Supreme Court found a right of privacy in the shadows of the Bill of Rights, where it had been lurking for almost a hundred and eighty years?’

‘That’s what they said.’

‘But I thought the Bill of Rights lists all the rights of the people guaranteed by the Constitution?’

‘That’s not correct.’

‘Please explain.’

‘The Framers figured right-wing Republicans—’

‘In seventeen eighty-nine?’

‘—would read the Bill of Rights as an exclusive list of the people’s rights, so James Madison added the Ninth Amendment specifically to negate that interpretation.’

‘And the Ninth Amendment states what?’

She read: ‘“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”’

‘To translate, the Framers wanted to make clear that there were other rights retained by the people, even if not specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
in
Griswold
, the Court determined that one such unmentioned right was the right of privacy. The Court struck down a state law that banned the use of contraceptives, holding that that decision—whether or not to get pregnant—is within a woman’s zone of privacy. That the government has no say in such a personal decision.’

Mr. Brennan, also seated on the first row, raised his hand. He tried to transcribe every word Book uttered in each class on his laptop, more court reporter than law student. Book nodded at him.

‘Professor, after “whether or not to get pregnant,” did you say—’

‘Mr. Brennan, you don’t need to record my lectures
ver batim
. Just listen. Or better yet, participate.’

Mr. Brennan’s hands hovered over his keyboard. Book surrendered, as he had each class.

‘I said, “that decision—whether or not to get pregnant—is within a woman’s zone of privacy. That the government has no say in such a personal decision.”’

Mr. Brennan typed furiously.

‘Got it. So the rule of
Griswold
is—’

‘Mr. Brennan, this is Con Law not Civ Proc. You’re not trying to learn discrete rules of the Court. You’re trying to learn to think for yourself, which, unfortunately, few of you will ever do in the private practice of law.’

Mr. Brennan held his gaze. Book again surrendered.

‘The rule of
Griswold
is that there is an unwritten but fundamental right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, and a state ban on the use of contraceptives by a married couple violates that right. Which the Court extended to unmarried couples in
Eisenstadt v. Baird
in nineteen seventy-two.’

Mr. Brennan typed. He wore a Boston Red Sox jersey and cap on backwards. He was one of those working-class sons, intent on graduating in the top ten percent of his class, hiring on with a large
Boston law firm, paying off his student loans, and living a better life than his father, a Boston cop. Mr. Brennan couldn’t get into Harvard, so he had come south for law school. He kept his head down, his fingers moving across the keyboard, and his mind focused on final exams. Book addressed the class.

‘
Griswold
was decided in nineteen sixty-five. Eight years later, the justices handed down perhaps the most controversial decision in the history of the Court:
Roe v. Wade
. In
Griswold
, the Court said a woman has a fundamental right not to get pregnant. In
Roe
, the Court said a woman has a fundamental right to end a pregnancy. Mr. Stanton, who was the appellee in
Roe
?’

Mr. Stanton occupied the top row, leaned back in his chair against the wall and dressed like the frat boy he was, his hands buried in his lap and his fingers tapping against his cell phone. Texting in Con Law class. Again, Book held his tongue. Mr. Stanton was smart and rich, and he acted the part. His father was a senior partner in a large Houston firm that had endowed two chairs at the law school. Consequently, Mr. Stanton acted more like a shareholder of the school than a student. The transition from the UT law school to the River Oaks Country Club would be smooth and seamless for E. Roger Stanton Jr.

‘Mr. Stanton, if you have a moment, would you please answer the question?’

Mr. Stanton still did not look up from his phone.

‘Sorry, Professor, I’m dumping my Facebook stock I got in the IPO. Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney, he was the appellee.’

‘Who was the appellant?’

Still texting.

‘Norma McCorvey, aka “Jane Roe, a pregnant single woman.”’

‘Who was her lawyer?’

‘Uh … I don’t know.’

‘Read
the opinion.’

Mr. Stanton’s eyes lifted to his laptop.