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The Justicars
My mother was Irish, so I guess I was raised Catholic, or at least thought so while I was being
raised. When I went to College I read the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo, and the Bulls of Pope Urban II and really
began to understand my faith, or at least thought so at the time. As a young law student at a Catholic College in the Pacific
North West I felt the need to really serve God in my career, but felt like being a lawyer wasn't enough. Several times I seriously
considered dropping out of school and becoming a Monk somewhere. On the one occasion that I actually began to pack my things
I decided to wait until I could intelligently decide between Benedictine and Cistercian. In the mean time I finished my degree,
passed the BAR and was out in the world.
I was hired by a firm in Portland, Payns and Molay, and made a comfortable
living for about five years, but didn't really feel satisfied or useful. I again found myself spending considerable time thinking
about joining a monastery. I put an add in the classifieds; "All My Worldly Possessions, $30,000" after having decided
on Benedictine (the Cistercian Habits are too hard to keep clean with all the manual work), but only got prank phone calls
about the price of my soul.
The difficulty in selling my things kept me away from the monastery long enough to think;
what if I started my own monastery? What if it were a Monastic Order of Lawyers? This really excited me, so I immediately
began to draw up a list of rules to organize and define this order. Honestly, I borrowed much from the medieval Templar Order's
Rule, obviously omitting their regulations for conduct during battle. Often Lawyers need to lie or twist truth in order to
win a case, I made very strict rules against this. We would be Lawyers of honesty, up holding the law and seeing that Justice
was done. There even was a clause stating that only innocent people could be represented by us, for we would be forced to
urge the jury to convict our guilty clients.
When it was complete I had it printed and bound. I then placed and
advertisement in the classifieds; "Wanted, Male Lawyers prepared to give up all worldly possessions, take a vow of chastity,
and work for the Kingdom of God." Alarmingly by the end of the week there were nine members. We sold our houses and donated
our other things to charity. We agreed that we would need to keep our cars to get to court, but they were no longer ours,
they were signed over to The Order. We took our small capital and bought a ranch outside of Portland to act as our Monastery.
By the end of the year we had worked through all the paperwork, established our way of life, and elected an Abbot to preside
over us. We also had grown to eighteen members. We needed a title, and quickly dismissed using the name of a Saint and the
word firm, but just as quickly agreed upon the name Justice Inc. despite how cheesy it sounded. Shortly after our first add
campaign we were meeting with clients, and rejecting contracts from various pen manufacturers (due to a typographical error).
After a few years we found we had a surplus of money and a shortage of space, so we built on a new wing complete
with chapel. We grew most of our own food and the treasury was quite full, so we lowered our rates and increased our donations.
We were gaining an odd reputation, though our clients were mostly satisfied with us. We did not take on cases' on the basis
that we thought we could win, but if we thought they were just, or innocent. Our monks were good and often won, though some
began to get a little too zealous.
The first occasion where a monk got out of hand was when a women client was convicted
of larceny. She had taken a company car by legal means, but had left it in the wrong company parking lot, and was subsequently
damaged by some falling scaffolding. Upon the appeal the Monk representing her became so adamant about her innocence, that
he challenged her company to a trial of ordeal. He insisted that if the court would just try to burn her at the stake, she
would be 'proved innocent beyond all doubt by her invulnerable opposition to the conflagration.' The court declined and sentenced
her to a fine; the Abbot sternly reprimanded her Lawyer.
The very next month we had our very first murder trial.
A different monk took on this client out of pity, because he couldn't afford any other Lawyer. Unfortunately for the defendant,
by the time the trial began his Lawyer was convinced of his guilt. Though he was told he could get another lawyer he declined,
and when the court began both the prosecution and his defense accused him. Things were looking bad and even he became convinced
of his own guilt, he confessed it to his lawyer and even repented and converted, though his lawyer did not let that get in
the way of his 'prosecution' defense.
It took a full week for the jury to come to a conclusion, and when they did
call the court back into session they were very confused. They found him innocent. Interviews afterward showed that they were
lost the whole time and couldn't remember who was who. One said that they voted innocent because the defense didn't get a
fair chance. We really didn't know how to take this, but soon there were other lawyers from firms around the world using this
'tactic.' After a week or so of council we made a rule never again to take it up, since 'it does not serve justice, but the
deplorable schemes of the Devil.' Once it was used against us, so an innovative new recruit tried to prove the defendant innocent,
as the prosecution. Though the defendant was found guilty, the monk was discharged from our order, for not overtly seeking
justice in the court. Selecting a Jury became a matter of finding naive people, ignorant to this tactic, and with short attention
spans. It was a tactic that had astonishing rates of success, even with jury's that were aware of it.
This abnormal
tactic acted to open the floodgates of other abnormal tactics. In Belgium, a man was found who looked like the defendant and
was paid to sit behind the prosecution's desk and whisper in people's ears, pretending to be the defendant. Another was having
a fellow lawyer from your team make numerous objections during your speech, this caused the jury to feel pity for you. One
bold lawyer in Toronto simply said for his opening argument "It's so obvious that this man is innocent, that I won't
even bother wasting anymore time than I have just taken." This argument caused more then half the jury to have a reasonable
doubt, despite the evidence presented against them. In California it became popular to get surgeries done so the defendant
or maybe a lawyer would appear to be someone famous. These tactics disgusted us and caused many of our monks to become disillusioned,
since these tactics were recognized as coming from our order. We lost over three fourths of our order in a year.
We held a council and decided to try and keep a low profile for a while. Our remaining twenty-seven monks devoted themselves
to civil trials. These became hard times, since we had such difficulty determining the innocent party in these trials, and
a draught had left our crops ravaged. We lost another four monks to Plague and Famine, a non-profit organization in Colorado
Springs. On a particularly hot summer day a monk became so frustrated with his defendant's stubbornness, and unfounded counter
accusations that he suggested they joust the other party and let the better party win. They took up that suggestion and held
a joust to settle their dispute. Word of this got out and many people came wanting to settle domestic disputes and other law
suits this way.
When we were presented with a contract for a television show we were split. Some thought it was a
wonderful opportunity to witness to the world, while I argued that it was shameless and against everything we stood for. Advocates
for this course secretly signed the contract, when the rest of us found out we left the order in an outrage. It became one
of the most popular Court TV shows, 'Justice Inc.'
I couldn't understand how they could sell out their faith, and
in the process wondered what our faith had been, what did we really believe. We were zealously obsessed with doing what we
felt was right, meticulous in our observance of mass and the divine liturgies. What did we think we were doing, and more importantly
what did God really want us to be doing? Where I am now seems so un-pious compared to being a monk, but there is something
different now, something more.
-Ben Austin
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