Page 116 - A Little Life: A Novel

“In this class, you will of course learn the mechanics of contracts—how
one is created, how one is broken, how binding one is and how to unbind
yourself from one—but you will also be asked to consider law itself as a

series of contracts. Some are more fair—and this one time, I’ll allow you to
say such a thing—than others. But fairness is not the only, or even the most
important, consideration in law: the law is not always fair. Contracts are not
fair, not always. But sometimes they are necessary, these unfairnesses,
because they are necessary for the proper functioning of society. In this
class you will learn the difference between what is fair and what is just, and,
as important, between what is fair and what is necessary. You will learn

about the obligations we have to one another as members of society, and
how far society should go in enforcing those obligations. You will learn to
see your life—all of our lives—as a series of agreements, and it will make
you rethink not only the law but this country itself, and your place in it.”
He had been thrilled by Harold’s speech, and in the coming weeks, by
how differently Harold thought, by how he would stand at the front of the

room like a conductor, stretching out a student’s argument into strange and
unimaginable formations. Once, a fairly benign discussion about the right to
privacy—both the most cherished and the foggiest of constitutional rights,
according to Harold, whose definition of contracts often ignored
conventional boundaries and bounded happily into other fields of law—had
led to an argument between the two of them about abortion, which he felt
was indefensible on moral grounds but necessary on social ones. “Aha!”

Harold had said; he was one of the few professors who would entertain not
just legal arguments but moral ones. “And, Mr. St. Francis, what happens
when we forsake morals in law for social governance? What is the point at
which a country, and its people, should start valuing social control over its
sense of morality? Is there such a point? I’m not convinced there is.” But he
had hung in, and the class had stilled around them, watching the two of

them debate back and forth.
Harold was the author of three books, but it was his last, The American
Handshake: The Promises and Failures of the Declaration of Independence,
that had made him famous. The book, which he had read even before he
met Harold, was a legal interpretation of the Declaration of Independence:
Which of its promises had been kept and which had not, and were it written
today, would it be able to withstand trends in contemporary jurisprudence?

(“Short answer: No,” read the Times review.) Now he was researching his