Honour Among Thieves

tomorrow,' continued Al Obaydi as he rose from the table to indicate that, as far he was concerned, the meeting was concluded. The Deputy Ambassador stretched out his hand and his visitor reluctantly shook it. Cavalli glanced up once again at the portrait of Saddam Hussein, turned, and quickly left. When Scott Bradley entered the room there was a hush of expectancy. He placed his notes on the table in front of him, allowing his eyes to sweep around the lecture hall. The room was packed with eager young students holding pens and pencils poised above yellow legal pads. 'My name is Scott Bradley,' said the youngest Professor in the Law School, 'and this is to be the first of fourteen lectures on Constitutional Law.' Seventy-four faces stared down at the tall, somewhat dishevelled man who obviously hadn't noticed that the top button of his shirt was missing and who couldn't have made up his mind which side to part his hair that morning. 'I'd like to begin this first lecture with a personal statement,' he announced. Some of the pens and pencils were laid to rest. 'There are many reasons to practise law in this country,' he began, 'but only one which is worthy of you, and certainly only one that interests me. It applies to every facet of the law that you might be interested in pursuing, and it has never been better expressed than in the engrossed parchment of The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. ' "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." That one sentence is what distinguishes America from every other country on earth. 'In some aspects, our nation has progressed mightily since 1776,' continued the Professor, still not having referred to his notes as he walked up and down tugging the lapels of his well-worn Harris tweed jacket, 'while in others we have moved rapidly backwards. Each of you in this hall can be part of the next generation of law makers or law breakers -' he paused, surveying the silent gathering, '- and you have been granted the greatest gift of all with which to help make that choice, a first-class mind. When my colleagues and I have finished with you, you can if you wish go out into the real world and ignore the Declaration of Independence as if it were worth no more than the parchment it was written on, outdated and irrelevant in this modern age. Or,' he continued, 'you may choose to benefit society by upholding the law. That is the course great lawyers take. Bad lawyers, and I do not mean stupid ones, are those who begin to bend the law, which, I submit, is only a step away from breaking it. To those of you in this class who wish to pursue such a course I must advise that I have nothing to teach you, because you are beyond learning. You are still free to attend my lectures, but "attending" is all you will be doing.' The room was so silent that Scott looked up to check they hadn't all crept out. 'Not my words,' he continued as he stared at the intent faces, 'but those of Dean Thomas W. Swan, who lectured in this theatre for the first twenty-seven years of this century. I see no reason not to repeat his philosophy whenever I address an incoming class of the Yale Law School.' The Professor opened the file in front of him for the first time. 'Logic,' he began, 'is the science and art of reasoning correctly. No more than common sense, I hear you say. And nothing so uncommon, Voltaire reminds us. But those who cry "common sense" are often the same people who are too lazy to train their minds. 'Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote: "The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience." ' The pens and pencils began to scratch furiously across the yellow pages, and continued to do so for the next fifty minutes. When Scott Bradley had come to the end of his lecture, he closed his file, picked up his notes and marched quickly out of the room. He did not care to indulge himself by remaining for the sustained applause that had followed his opening lecture for the past ten years. Hannah Kopec had been considered an outsider as well as a loner from the start, although the latter was often thought by those in authority to be an advantage. Hannah had been told that her chances of qualifying were slim, but she had now come through the toughest part, the twelve-month physical, and although, despite her background, she