Chapter Seven

The ruling came down at 10:00 a.m. sharp.

The courtroom was silent as Chief Justice Leonard Reynolds read the majority opinion. The case, Hernandez v. United States, had captivated the nation for months. A group of long-term immigrants, many of whom had lived in the country for decades, had challenged the government’s decision to deny them a path to legal status. They had jobs, families, and communities, yet the Court’s conservative majority ruled against them, upholding draconian immigration policies that would see them torn from their homes and sent back to countries they barely remembered.

“The Constitution does not grant this Court the power to legislate from the bench,” Reynolds declared. “While the petitioners’ circumstances are undoubtedly difficult, this is a matter for Congress to decide, not the judiciary.”

Jason Simpson sat stone-faced as Reynolds concluded. He had known this was coming. The conservative Justices had made their stance clear in oral arguments. But knowing didn’t make it hurt any less.

As the courtroom emptied, Grace lingered near Jason’s desk, waiting. She had seen him furious before—his outburst at Reynolds was still dominating the news cycle—but this was different. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t pacing. He just sat there, staring at the ruling, as though it was a personal failure.

He finally broke the silence. “Do you have a copy of my dissent?”

She nodded, handing him the printed pages. “It’s powerful,” she said quietly. “The best you’ve ever written.”

Jason exhaled. “Not good enough, apparently.”

Hours later, the dissent was published, and Jason’s words reverberated across the country:

Today, the Court abandons the very principles it claims to uphold. It hides behind procedure while condemning human beings to suffering. It invokes the Constitution as a shield to defend injustice, rather than as a guide toward justice. And in doing so, it betrays the most fundamental promise of our nation: that here, in America, we do not punish people simply for existing.

The petitioners in this case are not criminals. They are not enemies of the state. They are workers, parents, and neighbors. Many have spent their entire lives contributing to our society, paying taxes, raising families, and enriching their communities. And yet, today, this Court tells them they do not belong.

The majority argues that it is merely applying the law as written. But law is not meant to be wielded as a cudgel against the defenseless. Law is not meant to be a justification for cruelty. When the law sanctions injustice, it is not immutable; it is a call to action. We do not exist to rubber-stamp inhumanity. We exist to challenge it, to demand better. That is what justice demands of us.

Today, my colleagues fail in that duty. And for that, history will remember them.

Grace sat in Jason’s office, rereading the dissent over and over. She had clerked for him long enough to appreciate his writing, but this was different. It wasn’t just legal reasoning—it was raw, unfiltered outrage. A call to arms.

She swallowed hard. “This ruling… it’s monstrous.”

Jason nodded, rubbing his temples. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”

“Why do they even pretend to care?” she asked, frustration seeping into her voice. “They sit up there in their robes and talk about ‘textualism’ and ‘judicial restraint’ while ruining people’s lives. How do they sleep at night?”

Jason gave a humorless chuckle. “Comfortably. They tell themselves they’re just following the law, that it’s not their place to ‘interfere.’ They pretend neutrality, but neutrality in the face of injustice is just another form of complicity.”

Grace was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly, she said, “I used to believe in the system. I thought if you worked hard, if you made the best legal argument, you could change things.”

Jason studied her. He saw the struggle in her eyes—the slow erosion of certainty, the realization that the world wasn’t as fair as she had once believed. It was the same realization he had faced years ago.

“And now?” he asked.

She hesitated. “Now, I’m starting to wonder if the system was designed to be this way.”

Jason leaned back in his chair. “It was.”

Grace bit her lip. “So what do we do?”

Jason’s voice was firm. “We dissent. We fight. And we never, ever let them think we’ve given up.”

She looked down at the dissent one more time. The words on the page burned into her mind.

And for the first time since she started clerking for Jason Simpson, she wondered if she had been on the wrong side all along.

###

The office was dimly lit, the glow of the city skyline casting long shadows across the bookshelves. Jason sat in his chair, sipping from a glass of whiskey, his face etched with exhaustion. Across from him, Grace perched on the edge of the leather couch, staring at her hands, deep in thought.

The Court had adjourned hours ago, but neither of them had left. The weight of the day’s ruling—the cruelty of it, the finality of it—hung over them like a storm cloud. Grace had read Jason’s dissent at least a dozen times, and every time, it stirred something in her she wasn’t sure she was ready to face.

Finally, she spoke. “Do you ever feel like you’re screaming into the void?”

Jason smirked, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “Every damn day.”

Grace exhaled, running a hand through her hair. “I mean it, though. We sit here, we write these opinions, these dissents, and for what? The majority justices don’t care. The politicians don’t care. Half the country probably doesn’t care.”

Jason leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “Then why are you still here?”

She hesitated. “Because… I don’t want them to win.”

Jason studied her, a flicker of something like approval in his eyes. “That’s the right instinct. But it’s not just about winning. It’s about the fight itself.”

Grace sighed. “I just—I used to believe the law was neutral. That if you made the best argument, the truth would win out. But I’m starting to see that’s not how it works.”

Jason set his glass down with a soft clink. “Grace, the law has never been neutral. It’s a weapon. It’s a tool. And like any tool, it depends on whose hands it’s in. Sometimes it builds. Sometimes it destroys.”

She frowned. “That’s… cynical.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s reality. Do you think segregation ended because the Constitution changed? It didn’t. The words were always there. The principles were always there. But it took people—real, flawed, stubborn people—to force the country to read those words differently.”

Grace thought about that. “So you’re saying the law is just… whatever we say it is?”

Jason chuckled. “In a way, yes. The law is stories we tell ourselves about right and wrong, about power and justice. And those stories change with time, with struggle, with pressure. The people in power want you to believe the law is fixed, that it’s written in stone, that it can’t be questioned. But that’s a lie. It’s been rewritten over and over again. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.”

Grace looked down at the floor. “I guess I just thought the Supreme Court was supposed to be above all that.”

Jason let out a dry laugh. “That’s what they want you to think. But look at the Court’s history. It upheld slavery. It upheld segregation. It upheld bans on interracial marriage, on contraception, on same-sex relationships. It has been on the wrong side of justice more times than I can count. And when it finally gets something right, it’s not because the justices suddenly saw the light—it’s because the world outside this building changed first.”

She swallowed. “That’s a depressing thought.”

Jason tilted his head. “Is it? Or is it empowering?”

Grace frowned. “How could it possibly be empowering?”

“Because it means nothing is set in stone,” Jason said. “It means change is possible. It means the law is alive, and if enough people push hard enough, it can be made to serve justice instead of standing in its way.”

Grace let out a slow breath. “That’s why you fight so hard.”

Jason nodded. “That’s why I fight. Because if I don’t, if people like us don’t, then the law belongs to the people who use it to harm others. And I won’t let that happen without a fight.”

A long silence settled between them. Grace had spent most of her career admiring conservative legal minds, believing in the sanctity of institutions, the integrity of the Court. But now, sitting across from Jason, she saw the cracks in that belief. He wasn’t just another justice. He wasn’t just a political opponent. He was a man who had stared into the heart of the system and refused to accept its flaws as inevitable.

“I used to think you were reckless,” she admitted. “Too emotional. Too aggressive.”

Jason smirked. “I am.”

She shook her head. “No. You just care more than I was taught a justice should.”

Jason leaned back, folding his arms. “Grace, the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who think they’re neutral. The ones who sit back and do nothing in the face of injustice because they think their hands are clean.”

She thought about the majority opinion that had come down today. About the families being torn apart because people in power decided their suffering was just an unfortunate consequence of the law.

And then she thought about Jason’s dissent. The fire in it. The refusal to accept that cruelty was just how the world worked.

She looked him in the eyes. “You’re not neutral.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Never claimed to be.”

Grace let out a quiet chuckle, shaking her head. “I think I’m starting to understand why you’re so damn loud.”

Jason grinned. “Good. Because we’re just getting started.”