So, Sue Me - Lawyers, Courts, Judges, And Fools, The Way Of America

'Go to law school', Appleby Townsend said to his son, Parker, when the boy nearing the end of his college years was unsure of what to do.  Parker thought briefly of an academic career, then one of social justice, and even for a moment, the Navy Seals; but all in all, his formative years had formed nothing.  He was rudderless and confused.

   

He had heard this law school thing before, a hundred times.  However his Aunt Felicia, who had rightfully earned the reputation of The Hanging Judge for her 19th century sentencing, her absolute rectitude and moral purpose when it came to putting away criminals, and the delight she took in doing so, said, 'Be a checker at Walmart'. 

Years of progressive jurisprudence had limited her ability to severely punish, but she knew how to stretch even the most restrictive sentencing guidelines and make the convicted pay. More and more, however, she was seeing court dockets overwhelmed with senseless, retributive cases of vengeance, pettiness, and downright pissy food fights.  'Everyone should have their day in court', the principle enshrined in the Constitution, had become a joke.  Americans had taken this hallowed idea and turned it into a clown show.  

All of America had become a three-ring legal circus, where one incidental, frivolous, irresponsible law suit after another crowded court agendas. Politically-appointed judges were handing down clearly biased, personal decisions based on flimsy Constitutional evidence, and letting higher courts challenge their rulings.  In the meantime the falsely accused were left in legal limbo while the case made its way up through the judicial system - the whole point of lawfare. 

The allegations against Donald Trump were cases in point. District Attorneys in New York, Atlanta, and elsewhere brought shameless cases against the President, using the law as a weapon in the progressive armory.  The cases were baseless, unconstitutional shams.  Each and every one was eventually dismissed. 

 

Whether judges were appointed on the basis of their political credentials or elected in partisan elections, the right to a free and fair trial was compromised from the very start. Juries were selected by canny lawyers to cater to the known political whims of the judges appointed for each case.  The whole process was rigged from top to bottom. 

'It beats the gulag', said a defender of the American system of justice, and like Winston Churchill's famous aphorism about democracy being the worst system of governance except for all the rest, the defense of America's legalistic system of justice rested on the same principle.  The law may be a nasty, biased system, but it's the best around.

Parker Townsend, a smart, precocious boy, understood all this.  He respected his Aunt and all the well-meaning friends and relatives who suggested the law. Again, borrowing the famous aphorism of Engine Charlie Wilson, former CEO of General Motors, 'The business of America is business', the well-informed knew that the business of America was law. 

People were suing each other left and right, leaving normal compromise and reasonable settlement aside.  The 'objective' court would be the place to duke out differences and make some money besides. Wives sued husbands, customers sued merchants, merchants sued suppliers, suppliers sued their wholesalers, children sued dead parents estates, tenants sued landlords...the suits and counter-suits went on ad infinitum ad nauseam. 

'Thar's gold in them thar hills', thought Parker, money to be made.  A lawyer was like a stockbroker - no matter whether clients made or lost money, the broker made money on the trade.  A good lawyer would work off retainers, fees, and expenses - enough to make a good living - and if he won the case, the percentage of the settlement would fund his retirement. 

Litigation was it, decided the young Parker.  Who cared whether the great American system of justice was flawed, corrupted, and serving only the lawyers and judges in court?  The law was a recession-proof profession. Even in the hardest of times there would be call for one person to sue another; and so it was that he headed to Harvard Law School, the best of the best, an education which would guarantee him entry into the top law firms in the country and money galore. 

At Pickings, Flaubert, & Micklewaite one of New York's premier law firms with a reputation for winning difficult litigation, was his first home after the obligatory rounds of clerkships, legal internships, and due professional process.  There he was colleague to the best legal minds in the city, sharp-edged lawyers who could sue the pants off anyone who walked into a courtroom - or better yet, intimidate them to such a degree that they would settle, and settle generously, before the case ever came to trial. 

Parker took to litigation like a duck to water.   Here the money was to be made, and as much as he respected his Aunt Felicia for her years as a judge in criminal court, this was where the action was.  Not only were the financial rewards far greater than that of any defense attorney, but the thrill of the hunt - litigating multi-billion dollar cases involving the country's most powerful corporate interests - was far more satisfying putting a murderer in jail. 

 

Murders in America were a dime a dozen, and if his true feeling were known, he would rather see America wipe the streets clean of dysfunctional, worthless creeps just like the Presidents of El Salvador and the Philippines among others had done.  The clean sweeps of MS-13 gangbangers in San Salvador, or the bands of terrorizing thugs in Manila were things of beauty. 

Extorting (yes, that was the operative term at PF&M) millions out of corporate big wigs and buying homes in St. Tropez and Palm Beach as a result was far more satisfying than any criminal justice. 

It was this attitude, this amoral purpose, this honing of the judicial razor to cut quickly and deeply was exactly what Parker had always wanted.  In so doing he became wealthy, well-known, sought-after, and part of the Great American Dream. 

By joining the ranks of PF&M, Parker and his colleagues were able to avoid all the phony pretense of criminal indictments (viz. Donald Trump's history) and the boring, repetitive, trials of America's lowlifes who should have been summarily thrown into an airless prison cell and fed bread and water until they were strung up and hanged. 

'Whoa, there', said an old Yale classmate who had, like Parker, become an attorney but who had lived in penury and legal backwaters defending the poor, 'socially misaligned' victims of faulty prosecution. They too need a fair, unbiased trial, he said.  They are just as deserving of legal counsel as those in the upper echelons, in fact more so he went on given the racism....Here Parker turned off  and tuned out, for he had heard these whiny, self-absorbed pleas before.  Let him - the classmate - go ahead and live in a rambler in Gaithersburg and eat Chinese takeout if that rings his bell.  

Parker had an image of those AI-generated aerial maps of air traffic crisscrossing the United States - not one bit of empty sky.  Planes landing and taking off every second, flying with minimum distance apart, filling the map.  An aerial map of litigation would look the same - someone suing someone else every second in every corner of the country.  Everybody was doing it every moment of the day, and money was to be made by lawyers hand over fist. 

'I'm an attorney', Parker remarked modestly to his Yale classmates at a recent reunion.  He never felt the need in this crowd to mention that he was not just a lawyer but one of the best, the most successful, and the wealthiest in the land.  They knew and gave him the deference due to such a success.  They, environmentalists, social activists, academics, journalists, development economists - the surprisingly errant professions of a well-heeled Yale class - knew that as satisfied as they were doing good, in their heart of hearts, they wanted to be Parker Bentworth Townsend.