dissented?'
'Judge Nhu.'
'Montgomery versus Nhu,' Fini said with a smile. 'Two scorpions in a bottle.' Adam heard the fondness in his voice: Viet Nhu had been Fini's clerk during his first year on the Court, and it was Fini's not-sosecret hope that, should a Republican retake the White House, Nhu would become his colleague.
'I copied the opinion,' Adam said, handing it across the justice's desk. 'Including the dissent.'
Putting on his reading glasses, Fini scanned the pages. 'From the looks of this,' he said at length, 'our venturesome friends in San Francisco are working some interesting variations on AEDPA. Who wrote the cert pool memo?'
Adam straightened his bow tie. 'One of the Chief Justice's clerks. She tries to make the case sound humdrum, a waste of time.'
'But you don't think it is.'
'I think she slighted the State's petition, Mr. Justice. At the very least, there's a clear conflict on freestanding innocence between the Ninth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit in a case called Burton v. Dormire. That's a pretty important issue.'
'Very important, I'd say.'
Adam felt a spark of excitement, a tingling at the back of his neck. The keenness of Fini's combative instincts, though frequently aroused, sometimes held the added promise of pitched battle and, most gratifying of all, of some new landmark in the law on which his clerk's fingerprints, however faint, might appear.
'What would you like me to do?' Adam inquired.
'My homework. Dig into every question, Adam. Then, if you feel it's justified, prepare a thorough countermemo arguing for a grant of the State's petition.' Fini tossed back the opinion in his hand. 'Looks like Viet Nhu's dissent should give you a head start.'
'Right away,' Adam promised.
* * *
Unsmiling, Caroline Masters looked up from her work. While generally polite, she was not always gracious about interruptions, and this was such a day. 'What is it?' she asked curtly.
Though undaunted, Callista decided not to sit. 'I'm afraid I've attracted a Fini-gram.'
'Indeed?' With a sigh at this allusion to Fini's oft-bombastic e-mails, Caroline leaned back in her chair. 'Concerning what peril to our nation's jurisprudence?'
'The Price case, another Ninth Circuit reversal of a death sentence. I gave you the memo a few days ago.'
'I remember it.' Frowning, Caroline became still, a reflective figure framed by the only personal mementos on her credenza—a photograph of her daughter, Brett, another taken with President Kilcannon in the Rose Garden on the day of her surprising nomination. 'The freestanding innocence question is a bit dicey,' the Chief allowed. 'I'd prefer the Court not grapple with it now. Is Justice Fini's communique in the nature of a polemic, or does it come with a concrete plan of action?'
'It comes with a countermemo.' Written, Callista did not add, by a bow-tied and overprivileged little reactionary from Virginia Law School, quite possibly America's whitest male. 'Justice Fini wants you to put the Price case on the discuss list.'
Though Caroline smiled resignedly, Callista could imagine her perplexity. The Chief Justice's 'discuss list,' circulated before each conference among the justices, specified the petitions she deemed worthy of consideration. While the vast majority of petitions never made the list—and, therefore, were dead—any associate justice could request that a petition be added to the list. When that justice was Anthony Fini, what followed was often contentious: not only did Fini give no quarter but he was that rarest of justices on a decorous Court, a vigorous lobbyist for his positions. And never more so than in opposing strictures on the death penalty, for which he was an unabashed proponent—Rennell Price, whoever he was, had become less a person than a potential milestone in the law.
After a moment, Caroline Masters stirred herself from thought. 'Prepare another memo,' she directed briskly. 'Hit all the issues raised by Justice Fini, and all the reasons not to take this case. I don't think it would be in the interest of the law or, in candor, this Court.'
'How so?'
The Chief Justice considered her, then offered a rare elaboration of her thoughts. 'Capital punishment,' she answered, 'distorts the law, imports the corruptions of politics into whether a prisoner lives or dies, and corrodes relations among the justices. Eventually, death penalty cases present so many fundamental questions that they can color one justice's view of another as a human being. I don't want that to happen to my colleagues.'
Or to me, Callista could sense the Chief thinking. Caroline Masters was no doubt aware of the subterranean bitterness swirling among the justices—the rumor, for example, that after the latest approval of an execution in Mississippi, Justice Fini had referred to the Chief Justice's dissenting ally Justice Huddleston as a 'hand-wringing mediocrity,' and that the venerable Huddleston had labeled Fini 'the only justice in memory who'd have deferred to the commandant of Auschwitz.' The Chief Justice surely did not want another death row inmate to put her Court, or these emotions, in play.
'Do you want me to circulate my memo?' Callista asked.
'Only after I read it,' Caroline Masters answered. 'With all respect, Callista, I might want to take a hand in this myself.'
FOUR
TWO FRIDAYS LATER, THE NINE JUSTICES OF THE UNITED STATES Supreme Court gathered in the Chief Justice's conference room.
To Caroline Masters, the room combined the clubby aura of an inner sanctum with a distinct sense of history —wood paneling, a fireplace, a rich red carpet, oil portraits of Chief Justices Marshall and Jay in scarlet robes,
