The American system of justice, just like the American political system, isn t perfect, but it is definitely the best in the world. I m not a lawyer, nor fluent in legalese, so people said I must be somewhat masochistic to read all of those legal briefs and arguments. As a youngster, my teachers and family all urged me to go to law school. Graduating high school, I enrolled at a college with an excellent pre-law program. But along the way, I decided that I d much rather get a job in the business world than bury myself in stacks of legal briefs.
Life has a funny way of bringing things back around.
Nearly thirty years after I made that choice, I found myself surrounded by stacks of legal briefs, carefully reading each one to see if I agreed with the arguments it raised. Not as a lawyer, mind you, but as a representative of a group of small businesses. And I found myself discussing the case with lawyers, who obviously knew the law better than I, but who had never had to make a payroll, or file an EPA report, or face an EPA inspector, and telling them that the rule was unclear, its burdens unfair, and its benefit uncertain. To my abject surprise, I found them listening, then remarkably putting my arguments into the proper legal format for presentation to the United States Supreme Court. On Election Day 2000, I sat in the auditorium of the Supreme Court, surrounded by government officials and scores of lawyers, feeling somewhat out of place, and waiting for the case I helped to fashion to get its hearing, its day in Court.