Con Law

by Mark Gimenez

  Book put the phone to his ear. ‘John Bookman.’

  ‘Yeah, uh, Professor, this is Sergeant Taylor, Austin PD. We found your mother.’

  ‘She wandered off again?’

  ‘Yes, sir. She was at the mall. Victoria’s Secret. Walked out with an armful of lingerie, said she had a date tonight. They called us, we took her home. I called your sister. She’s on the way. I’ll stay till she gets here.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. I worked with your dad.’ He paused. ‘Uh, Professor, I don’t mean to mind your business, but you should really consider putting your mom in a home. Folks in her condition, they wander off, get lost, end up outside all night. One day we might not find her in time. Your dad wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  Book thanked the officer and hung up the phone. He could not abide the thought of his mother in a nursing home. Myrna regarded him over her reading glasses.

  ‘You okay?’

  He wasn’t, but he nodded yes.

  ‘Messages?’

  Myrna held up pink call slips. ‘Fox wants you on the Sunday morning show, by satellite. To debate the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘McConnell.’

  ‘Again? After our last debate?’

  ‘He’s a politician, doesn’t know you made him look like a fool.’

  ‘Wasn’t exactly hard work.’

  ‘And Meet the Press wants you to debate Schumer.’

  ‘Him, too?’

  She shrugged. ‘They’re gluttons for punishment.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘They’re stupid, they’re egomaniacs, they’re—’

  ‘The messages.’

  ‘The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times want your comments on the case.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today. Front-page articles in tomorrow’s editions. And you’re late for the faculty meeting.’

  Myrna reached down to her oversized purse and came up again with a sealed plastic container. Several years back, she started bringing him leftovers from dinner the night before because he ate protein bars for breakfast, bachelor and all; it was now a daily ritual.

  ‘Chicken quesadillas,’ she said.

  ‘With your guacamole?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Stu said I should charge you, even if they are just leftovers.’

  ‘Remind Stu that I didn’t charge him for his murder case.’

  A year before, Myrna’s husband had accidentally run over an armadillo in his four-wheel-drive pickup truck. An animal-rights activist, which is to say, a resident of Austin, had witnessed the ‘murder’ and called the police. The district attorney, up for reelection, charged Stu with animal cruelty. Book defended him and won an acquittal.

  ‘Mail?’

  Myrna pointed a thumb at his office door behind her. He walked through the open door and into his office crowded with a leather couch, a bookshelf filled with casebooks and a crash helmet, law review articles stacked along the walls, Southwestern art and framed photographs of himself with Willie Nelson and ZZ Top and other Texas musicians, a cluttered desk with an open laptop, and a work table where a young woman sat reading his mail.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Nadine Honeywell. I’m a two-L. The dean of students sent me over. I’m your new intern.’

  Tenure had also earned Book a paid student assistant to help with his research, his law review articles, and his correspondence.

  ‘Where’s Renée?’

  ‘She quit.’

  ‘Why?’

  Nadine shrugged. ‘All she said was, “I didn’t go to law school to get shot at.” She was just joking, right, Professor?’

  Book dropped the armload of books and notes and Myrna’s plastic container onto the couch then stepped to the solitary window and stared out at the treed campus. He had grown to like Renée. Just as he had grown to like all of his interns. But sooner or later, they all quit.

  ‘Right, Professor?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, Ms. Honeywell. She was just joking.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  He turned from the window. Nadine squirted hand sanitizer from a small plastic bottle into one palm then rubbed her hands together. The room now reeked of alcohol. She wore a T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and black-framed glasses riding low on her nose. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and Book could discern no sign of makeup or scent of perfume. She was skinny and looked thirteen. She picked up an envelope and used a pocketknife to slice open the flap.

  ‘Is that my pearl-handled pocketknife?’ Book asked.

  ‘Must be. I found it on your desk.’

  She gestured with his knife at the pile of mail on the table in front of her.

  ‘Myrna said you get hundreds of these letters every week.’

  ‘Every week.’

  ‘So people all over the country write to you and ask for help? Like you’re some kind of superhero or something?’

  ‘Or something.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Help them.’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Why the snail mail? Haven’t they heard of email?’

  ‘I don’t publish my email address. I figure if they want my help, they should at least be willing to write a real letter. And you can tell a lot more about a person from a letter.’

  ‘I can tell there are a lot of sad people out there. Single mothers not getting their child support—’

  ‘Send those over to the Attorney General’s Child Support Office.’

  ‘—inmates claiming innocence and wanting DNA tests—’

  ‘Send those to the Innocence Project.’

  ‘—people wanting to sue somebody—’

  ‘No civil cases.’ Book took a step toward his desk. ‘Tell me if you find something interesting.’

  ‘I did.’

  Nadine held up an envelope.

  ‘You should read this one.’

  Book took the envelope, walked over to his desk, and was about to drop down into his chair when he heard Myrna’s voice from outside.

  ‘Faculty meeting!’

  He pushed the envelope into the back pocket of his jeans, grabbed the plastic container with Myrna’s quesadillas, and walked out of his office and down the corridor.

  Chapter 3

  The University of Texas School of Law opened its doors in 1883 with two professors teaching fifty-two students. White students. State law forbade admission of black students. In 1946, a black man named Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the UT law school; his admission was denied solely because of his race. The infamous 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson had deemed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment satisfied if a state provided ‘separate but equal’ accommodations for the races. So, rather than admit Mr. Sweatt, UT opened a separate law school for blacks only. But while the UT law school then had sixteen professors, eight hundred fifty students, a 65,000-volume library, and alumni in positions of legal power throughout the state, the blacks-only law school had three professors, twenty-three students, a 16,500-volume library, and exactly one graduate who was a member of the Texas bar. Mr. Sweatt sued but lost in the state trial court, state appeals court, and state supreme court. So he took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Court ruled in 1950 that the blacks-only law school did not offer a legal education equal to that offered whites and ordered Mr. Sweatt admitted to the UT law school. Sixty-two years later, the University of Texas School of Law had seventy-two full-time professors, 1,178 students, a million-volume library, and sixty-two black students.

  Book opened the door and stepped inside the faculty conference room where most of the full-time faculty were already engaged in vigorous debate. He tried to walk unnoticed around the perimeter of the large room, but the discussion abruptly stopped, and all heads turned his way, as if a student had
invaded their private sanctum.

  ‘Ah, our very own Indiana Jones is honoring us with his presence this morning. How wonderful. My, the press does love our dashing young professor, don’t they?’

  Addressing Book from the head of the long conference table was Professor Jonah Goldman (Harvard, 1973, Environmental Law), the faculty president. Book’s exploits in East Texas had made the national press.

  ‘And your book is still number one on the New York Times, I see. I would think you could afford a suit with all those royalties.’

  Professor Goldman had lived the last thirty-five years of his life in this law school, seldom venturing far from campus, preferring instead to live like a nun cloistered inside a convent. Like many of his contemporaries, he had entered law school to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War and had stayed on to enjoy the benefits of lifetime tenure. He was short and portly and sported fluffy white hair and a trimmed white beard; he wore a brown plaid three-piece suit and a brown bowtie; there was still one law professor in America wearing bowties. Book ignored him (and his bowtie) and found a seat in the back corner next to his best friend among the faculty, which is to say, his only friend among the faculty.

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Book.’

  Henry Lawson (UT, 1997, Oil and Gas Law) was an associate professor of law. His face held the expression of a middle-aged man with no job security. Which was what he was. He occupied a rung on the academic career ladder one below that of a tenured professor of law. And his tenure was on the agenda that day.

  His chances were not good. First, forty-three of the seventy-two professors in the room held law degrees from Harvard and Yale while Henry held a law degree from this very law school. Only four other professors on the full-time faculty were UT law graduates; no other Texas law school, or Southern law school for that matter, was represented on the faculty. When Harvard-and Yale-educated professors did the hiring, they hired Harvard and Yale graduates, not Texas and Alabama graduates. They demanded diversity in all things academic, except professors’ law schools and political ideology.

  Second, Henry had spent five years working in the legal department of an international oil company. That experience served him well as a professor teaching oil and gas law, but as far as the Harvard and Yale professors were concerned, he might as well have been in-house counsel to the Grand Order of the Ku Klux Klan. Which at one time would not have disqualified one from teaching at UT. William Stewart Simkins, a Klansman turned law professor, taught at the UT law school from 1899 to 1929; the university even named a dormitory in his honor in 1954, coincidentally the same year the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturning Plessy and declaring that ‘separate but equal’ violated the Constitution. The Board of Regents had renamed the dorm just the past year.

  And third, the slim chance Henry did have would become no chance at all if the Harvard–Yale cartel discovered that he had voted for George W. Bush. Twice. Henry’s expression revealed his despair.

  ‘I’m forty-one, Book,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There’s no other law school out there for me. With this economy and law jobs plummeting, schools are freezing new hires. I’ve been denied tenure twice. Three strikes, and I’m out.’

  He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. After a long moment, he turned to Book.

  ‘Ann’s pregnant again.’

  Book chucked him on the shoulder.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  Henry did not seem thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father for the third time. So Book did the only thing he knew to perk up his friend’s spirits: he popped the top on the plastic container and offered Henry a quesadilla.

  ‘Chicken.’

  ‘With Myrna’s guacamole?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They ate the quesadillas while the other professors renewed their debate in earnest.

  ‘What are they fighting about today?’ Book asked.

  ‘What else? Money and tenure. And the vacant assistant deanship.’

  The assistant dean had been fired when it came to light that the UT Law School Foundation, a nonprofit run by alumni, had handed out—on the dean’s sole recommendation—$4.65 million in ‘forgivable loans’ to twenty-two professors in amounts ranging from $75,000 to $500,000. Purportedly to attract and retain key faculty by allowing them to purchase homes in the high-dollar Austin residential market, the loans were forgiven if the professor remained on the faculty for a negotiated term of three to ten years. The assistant dean himself had received a $500,000 loan, apparently to ensure his loyalty to UT. The secret faculty compensation numbers had become public when several professors made an open records request; the information ignited a firestorm among the faculty, not because the other professors thought the loans too ‘Wall Street’ during this Great Recession when the law school was increasing tuition on its middle-class students by double digits, but because they wanted in on the action. The controversy reached the university president, and worse, the Austin newspaper and the legal blogosphere, which proved an embarrassment to the administration; the president then fired the assistant dean. He couldn’t fire the dean who doled out the money because the Longhorn football coach and the law school dean—a legendary law professor at UT who had taught most of the senior partners at the major Texas law firms and who was now a legendary accumulator of donations and endowments from those law firms—ran the only two profit centers on the UT campus. But someone had to be fired.

  ‘I want more money!’

  Professor Sheila Manfried (Yale, 1990, Feminist Legal Theory and Gender Crimes) was addressing the faculty. She waved a thick document in the air.

  ‘I have the faculty compensation numbers. I knew I was getting screwed, and this proves it. I can’t believe how many male professors are making more money than me. I want a salary increase, and I want one of those forgivable loans. I’ve been on this faculty for eighteen years. I’ve been tenured for twelve. I publish more articles than the rest of you combined. My law review articles have been published in the Yale Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review …’

  She pointed at male professors (who referred to her as ‘Professor Mankiller’ behind her back) in succession as if identifying guilty defendants in court.

  ‘… But you’re making more than me? And you? And you? You guys haven’t published anything in years.’

  Professor Herbert Johnson (UT, 1974, Contracts), one of those guys, offered the male rebuttal.

  ‘Well, Sheila, when I did publish something, it was useful, not your feminist crap. What’s your latest article? “The Tort of Wrongful Seduction.” You want men to be liable for damages if they really didn’t mean it when they said, “I love you.” How stupid is that?’

  Professor Manfried glared at him then jabbed a long finger in the air as if to stab him.

  ‘That’s it, Herb. I’m putting you on my witness list.’

  Professor Manfried had sued the university for gender discrimination over her compensation. She made $275,000.

  ‘Liberals fighting over money like Republicans,’ Henry said.

  ‘The desire for money transcends politics.’

  ‘But tenure doesn’t.’ Henry shook his head. ‘I was ROTC at A&M, served in the army for four years, graduated top of my class at this law school, worked to pay off my student loans … but I’m an outcast here because I worked for an oil company.’

  ‘And voted Republican,’ Book whispered.

  ‘Shh! They don’t know.’

  Book could count the number of professors who might have voted Republican on his fingers and toes, and he didn’t need to take his boots off. Of course, it was mere speculation; one did not speak publicly about such things inside an American law school, not if one wanted tenure or a salary hike. Law school faculties leaned hard to the left, which was to be expected at Harvard and Yale, but at Texas? That fact—that Ivy League-educated liberals who disdained all things Texan (except their Univ
ersity of Texas paychecks) and whose fondest dream was to be called home to Harvard and Yale were teaching the sons and daughters of conservative UT alumni—had always amused him. If only those conservatives knew that their beloved university had a faculty only slightly to the left of the ruling party in Havana.

  ‘I propose a faculty resolution demanding that the new assistant dean be a woman,’ Professor Manfried said. ‘Better yet, a lesbian.’

  ‘They’re bringing in an outsider,’ Professor Goldman said. ‘A heterosexual male.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s married with two children.’

  ‘That they hired a man?’

  ‘I have my sources in Admin. I hear that Roscoe will finalize the deal before the semester is out.’

  ‘Then I propose a resolution that Roscoe be fired and replaced with a lesbian.’

  Roscoe Chambers was the law school dean. He was seventy-seven years old and a crusty old fart who ran the law school with an iron fist.

  ‘He’s untouchable, Sheila,’ Professor Goldman said.

  ‘He’s a Republican dinosaur. It’s embarrassing to go to law school conferences and have professors from other schools laugh at us because we have a Republican dean.’

  ‘He controls too much alumni money to be fired. He can pick up the phone and pull in five million today. He’ll hire whomever the alumni want for the next assistant dean.’

  ‘Well, he might control who runs this school, but we control who teaches here.’

  Professor Manfried sat, and the collective blood pressure of the faculty receded to normal levels. Which gave Professor Robert Stone (Chicago, 2006, Law and Economics) an opening. He stood to groans. He had a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics and looked like Book’s accountant. He was one of the new breed of law professors, a multi-disciplinarian who thought outside the box, normally not considered a positive character trait in a non-tenured professor. Book didn’t know him well, but he liked what he did know.

  ‘My fellow colleagues, in one month, accredited law schools across the country will graduate forty-eight thousand new lawyers, the most in history. But only twenty thousand legal jobs await them. The big corporate law firms are hiring fewer graduates, they’re firing attorneys, and they’re outsourcing their low-level legal work overseas to lawyers in India and the Philippines just like the tech companies do their call centers.’