Page 12 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

Justice in Limbo

Losuia Airport on Kiriwina Island, about 200 nautical miles away.
She did not arrive.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Schlager. “This sounds a lot like
the fate of Amelia Earhart.”
“Very perceptive of you,” said Hydrargyrum drily. “All of that is
introductory material, setting the scene. Several ways I could
present it, but definitively not from the viewpoint of the missing
justice. No, the possibilities unfolding in the aftermath of her
disappearance are the story. If she is dead, the president’s party can
push through a replacement before the election; if not, and she can
be found and rescued, the court will remain in its present balance.
Thus both sides are motivated powerfully to investigate, with the
public hanging on every scrap of news coming out of the various
agencies mobilized to search for her. Immediately the applicable
statute of limitation on declaration of death is brought into focus:
she cannot be declared dead before seven years have elapsed unless
some proof of death is discovered and validated. That would be too
long to keep her seat on the court open, but the ensuing legal and
political wrangling would keep the situation unresolved for at least a
year absent definitive establishment of life or death.”
“All right,” said Fred Feghootsky. “That is plausible within
various elastic dimensions of probability. Then what?”
“The drama would follow two reporters from competing
American news agencies. They, like their employers, have
diametrically opposed political viewpoints. One would be a man,
with the usual gendered advantages and disadvantages; the other a
woman, more knowledgeable about the region and possibly more
acquainted with the judge—representing, shall we say, the feminine
angle. These two inevitably would know each other—have some
positive and negative history with each other---maybe a prior
romance—and would want to keep an eye on the other’s progress.
Whatever the story turned out to be, the one who got there first
would have a lot to gain. Of course, they are totally aware of the
political consequences of finding the truth. Well, there it is. I can
take it several ways from there—or in some new way that hasn’t
occurred to me. I guess this is like showing a movie to test

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