“We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily have it.”

Criminal law, the beginning of my sad, unhappy year in law school—I know nothing about the law and I have the grades to prove it. Others were hiding out. I was actively listening. My facial expressions interacting with everything Richardson said.

Early in the semester, we came upon a few cases with holdings that seemed unjust. He would point out the apparent injustice, smile, shrug, and say: “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily have it.”

Richardson had spotted my reactions and hit me twice with questions about these apparently “unjust cases.” I could give the summary and holding correctly, but Richardson would skewer me for my judgmental thoughts on the holding. He’d ask me to summarize the case, and in doing so, my face would tell my dissatisfaction. He followed with questions exposing my thoughts about the holding. I would inevitably--and stupidly--say I didn’t like the holding because it was wrong. He would smile; point out my opinion of the law didn’t change it, and once asked, “Are you familiar with the concept of compromise?” Steaming a bit, thinking he was baiting me, I said, “I’m humiliatingly aware of the concept of compromise.” It was a weak response, revealing I’m sure to most in the room, that I deserved baiting. He smiled, shrugged, and continued.

After those first hits, I listened and took notes, trying to mask my thoughts and feelings. I no more wanted to invite questions with facial expressions or body language. Though I never learned to mask completely, Richardson turned his hits to my classmates the rest of the semester and I thought he had forgotten about my narrow thinking and about me.

At semester’s end, in his last lecture, expounding on another apparently unjust holding, he stopped abruptly. Looked directly at me and said, “You don’t like that, do you, White?”

“No, because it seems wrong to me,” I said. Thereby proving how little wisdom I had gained that semester.

He began the phrase, all familiar gestures and inflections, “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily. . .”

I leaped on it, overlapping “have it,” obliterating his pause, smile, knowing look, and shrug with the words: “I’ve been waiting for you to say that again all semester.”

The slight stir in the lecture hall threw him off his timing. My classmates were emerging, making the subtle shifts needed to bring themselves out of hiding and into direct line of sight with Richardson. He raised his eyebrows, looked directly at me, again, and . . . waited.

“Because,” I threw into the silence, “If we accept that statement as true, we not only guarantee never to have justice, we also reduce number of times we might approach justice.”

At least that’s what I thought I said, what I wanted to say. My only clear memory is sound coming out of my mouth over the heart in my throat. I hope that’s what I said.

Richardson smiled, shrugged, and went on to the next case.

I like to remember that moment as some kind of victory.

I think if we believe something is impossible we make it so. If something is in fact impossible to attain and it is a good thing, it seems to me we increase the good by reaching for it.