Moral Bankruptcy

The Li Lu Law Library at Columbia was nearly empty, the way it only ever was when winter break had sent the sane people home and the rest stopped pretending they weren’t here to be seen.

Professor Jebediah Habl stood at a terminal with his glasses riding down his nose, scrolling through a catalogue entry that insisted the book existed and then declined to say where.

“That can’t be right,” he said to no one.

A girl at the circulation desk looked up. Early twenties. Hair pulled back. Laptop open beside a stack of returns. She had the unbroken expression of someone who still believed effort translated into outcome.

“What’s the title?” she asked.

The Moral Burden, Habl read silently, then hesitated. “It’s… obscure.”

“They usually are,” she said, and stood.

He followed her past study tables and the familiar geometry of federal reporters and treatises, into an aisle where the shelves grew older and less apologetic. The lights buzzed softly overhead.

“I’m finishing a paper,” Habl said, not sure why he was explaining himself. “I just need to confirm a reference.”

She stopped at a metal gate recessed into the shelving. A placard hung slightly crooked—white, new, and recently polished, as if someone had tried to refurbish the idea of a boundary.

NON-PRECEDENTIAL MATERIAL

STAFF ACCESS ONLY

She glanced at the sign, then at him.

“This section is off-limits.”

Habl smiled automatically. “Of course it is.”

She didn’t move.

“It won’t take long,” he said. “I’m not browsing. I’m not even particularly interested.”

“That’s usually when people are,” she said.

Something in his chest flickered—impatience, the irritation of a man forced to linger near a foregone conclusion.

The girl studied him a beat longer, then produced a ring of keys.

“Professor Habl,” she said, “first-year ethics…” like she’d learned the name from repetition rather than reverence. “If anyone asks—you wandered in.”

The gate clicked open.

Inside, the air wasn’t colder. Just still. This corner hadn’t been “updated.” Frayed lanyards roped off wrong turns. The books were uniformly bound, unlabeled, their spines blank except for faint indentations where titles might once have been.

Habl stepped forward, scanning. “There’s no catalogue number.”

“Nothing in here has one,” she said.

“Why keep them?”

She shrugged. “Because throwing them out would imply they didn’t matter.”

Habl drew a thin volume from the shelf.

No author. No publisher. Just text—case after case—set out in a style he recognized instantly and had never seen before.

He frowned.

“This is… theology.”

She was already backing away. “We’re closing in ten minutes.”

The gate clicked shut behind her.

Habl looked down at the page, at a sentence he hadn’t meant to read but now could not un-read:

Justice that returns to its author ceases to be justice.

He closed the book.

Then opened it again.

* * *

Case I: In re Kikeru (Minoan Board of Inquiry, Knossos, c. ___)

During a period of sustained scarcity, Kikeru, a fisherman of Kydonia, experienced abnormal and continuous success at sea. His nets returned full for months and seasons when other fishermen reported empty hauls and skittish waters. His vessels routinely arrived laden with red mullet and grouper, and later with swordfish and tuna, notwithstanding region-wide failure.

Kikeru was widely known as a devotee of Dictynna, the so-called Lady of the Nets. The record reflects repeated acts of public devotion: ascent of Mount Kydonia barefoot; offerings at Dictynna’s temple; and the hosting of multi-day feasts in the outer courtyards that became, in effect, civic festivals.

When Kikeru’s success expanded, a group of local fishermen petitioned for inquiry, alleging unlawful practices and, alternatively, illicit rites conducted at Kikeru’s festivals. During a bull-leaping ceremony in the Central Courts at Knossos, a tribunal convened before the Governor to determine whether a cause had been stated and whether relief was available.

The Board presented the dispositive question as follows:

Is Kikeru favored by Dictynna because he is good and just, obedient to the will of the gods; or is he favored because he sacrifices in Dictynna’s name while defying the will of the gods?

The tribunal divided. Some asserted that divine favor is evidence of moral worth. Others cited numerous examples of gods employing men for ends unrelated to desert. The Board ultimately ordered that Kikeru be denied access to the temple.

No record remains as to whether his fishing success continued.

Epilogue / Question Reserved.

The tribunal noted, without resolving, a further inquiry: whether continued sacrifice and philanthropy would retain moral value if it resulted in personal ruin; and, more broadly, how one is to quantify—or account for—the moral record of a human life.

* * *

Habl closed the book again, harder this time.

The case irritated him. It asked the wrong question and then congratulated itself for asking it. Good or evil. Favored or defiant. As if those distinctions ever survived contact with a market.

He had seen men like Kikeru before—men who learned early how to feed the right mouths. In law school they were called rainmakers. In practice, they were called partners. The system loved them for the same reason the sea had loved Kikeru: they produced.

Habl saw the proceeding behind it—the complaints, the inquiry, the tribunal convened only once envy became procedural.

He reached for his pen and wrote in the margin, smaller than before:

Success is never prosecuted until it embarrasses those without it.

The sentence pleased him. It felt accurate.

His father would have hated Kikeru.

The thought arrived uninvited and sat there.

His father had risen before dawn for thirty years to pour concrete in weather that split knuckles and stiffened joints. He had never once beaten the market, never once found a way to make the world yield more than it was willing to give. When the contracts dried up and the bank called in notes it had happily extended, the failure was described as personal.

Habl had learned the lesson early: justice was something you appealed to only after leverage failed.

He flipped back to the epilogue and reread the final question. It struck him now not as naïve, but as deliberately evasive.

Not whether Kikeru’s works were good.

But who they counted for.

Habl underlined the sentence once, then twice.

* * *

Case II: Rex v. Harrowell (Court of King’s Bench, London, 1769)

Edmund Harrowell, barrister and solicitor to multiple mercantile concerns operating between London and the American colonies, was retained to prosecute a series of debt actions arising from unpaid contracts in Massachusetts Bay and Virginia.

The contracts at issue were facially valid and executed under seal. The defendants, principally small landholders and tradesmen, alleged fraud, coercion, and the exploitation of wartime scarcity—entered under necessity and enforced on ruinous terms. Harrowell did not dispute the underlying conditions but argued that equity could not be permitted to swallow certainty, particularly where imperial commerce depended upon the enforceability of obligation.

The Court agreed.

Judgment was entered in favor of Harrowell’s clients in all material respects. Lands were seized. Livestock sold. Indentures enforced. The Court commended counsel for clarity of argument and fidelity to the law as written.

The record reflects no impropriety.

Harrowell’s reputation grew. He was appointed King’s Counsel within five years.

The ledger notes that Harrowell acted with full knowledge of the human consequences of enforcement and without personal malice. His conduct was efficient, correct, and profitable.

Moral Burden Assessed: Deferred.

Subsequent Accounting:

Harrowell died wealthy and honored. His name appears in no subsequent cause of reform. His legal principles endured. The properties seized under his actions produced no lasting civic benefit. The harm inflicted dissipated without correction, while the advantage obtained expired with him.

Observation:

Where injustice is procedurally immaculate, its recompense is neither immediate nor observable. Reward accrues. Cost compounds elsewhere.

Habl felt himself nod once, almost imperceptibly.

This, at least, was honest. No gods. No disguises. Just law.

He wrote in the margin:

Correct outcomes are not just outcomes.

The phrase felt finished. Publishable.

“Closing time,” a voice shouted, insistently.

Habl slipped the book into his briefcase and took the #1 downtown. In his apartment, he poured Macallan and opened it again.

* * *

Case III: In re Álvarez (Captaincy General of Cuba, Havana, 1896)

Mateo Álvarez, a dockworker and mule driver employed along the Havana–Güines rail corridor, was conscripted intermittently for civil labor during the latter years of the Ten Years’ War and subsequent unrest. The record reflects no rank, ownership interest, or formal allegiance beyond compliance with compulsory service orders.

Álvarez supported a household of five through irregular transport work and seasonal labor. Testimony indicates he routinely diverted portions of his wages and rations to families displaced by plantation seizures and retaliatory burnings.

During a period of intensified reconcentration, Álvarez was assigned to night transport of supplies and civilians under curfew. On multiple occasions he concealed unregistered persons—principally children—within cargo loads, delivering them to outlying parishes beyond enforced zones. These acts were neither authorized nor recorded.

In the winter of 1896, Álvarez was detained for suspicion of collaboration. No formal charges were sustained. He was released after prolonged confinement and returned to labor in diminished capacity. The record notes subsequent illness, loss of employment, and insolvency.

Álvarez died within two years. The cause is listed as “decline.” His surviving children entered domestic service at an early age. No compensation, commendation, or corrective relief appears in the file.

Immediate Outcome:

Loss borne exclusively by the subject and his household.

Secondary Effects:

Parish records indicate a marked increase in childhood survival rates in districts corresponding to Álvarez’s transport routes. Several individuals concealed during the reconcentration period later appear in educational registries and trade guilds following independence.

Among them were the children of families with no recorded connection to Álvarez.

Moral Burden Assessed: Irrecoverable.

Distribution of Benefit: Diffuse. Intergenerational. Non-attributable.

Observation:

Where moral action proceeds without recognition and against enforceable order, its yield is delayed beyond the life of the actor and accrues primarily to those without knowledge of its source.

* * *

Habl reached for his pen and stopped.

There was nothing to refute. No doctrinal sleight of hand. No appeal mischaracterized. The case wasn’t tragic. It was administrative.

He flipped back to the assessment line and read it again.

Irrecoverable.

The word sat on the page the way a finding sat in a judgment—calm, final, indifferent to argument.

He took a swallow of Macallan and let it burn down to the place in him that still mistook pain for proof. Then he turned the page.

The next entry began the way the others did—location, authority, year—except the heading looked as if it had been written by someone trying not to be noticed.

* * *

Case IV: In re H— (New York, 2003)

Habl felt a small, stupid flare of irritation at the dash. Redaction. Privacy. As if this book owed anyone confidentiality. These were not published adjudications. Only commentaries. Non-binding. Non-precedential. Dicta.

He read on.

Subject: male, skilled laborer. Independent contractor. Primary wage-earner.

Triggering event: collapse of credit line following delayed payment on municipal work.

Subsequent event: foreclosure; dissolution of household stability; sustained alcohol dependence.

Habl’s fingers tightened around the pen.

He told himself—automatically—that the description fit half the families in the boroughs. Every winter there were men who broke. Every decade there were recessions that took the same shapes. There was nothing unique in bankruptcy.

Then he saw the next line.

Behavioral record: continued performance of labor while insolvent; worked an entire year without pay; continued remittance to others notwithstanding personal depletion.

He stared at that phrase—continued remittance—and remembered.

His father at the kitchen table with envelopes—rent, Con Ed, groceries—his hands rough and careful as if money could bruise. His father leaving before sunrise with coffee in a thermos, coming back with his shoulders lowered, the day’s dust still in the seams of his nails. His father, later, standing in the hallway with an overdue notice and smiling as if a smile could pay it. Nothing to show for it. But a smile.

Habl had always told the story as a failure. A man broken by forces he couldn’t negotiate. A man undone by the bottle.

The book told it differently.

He kept reading.

Immediate outcome: loss borne by subject and household.

Secondary effects: nonlocal.

He laughed once, involuntarily.

A few lines down, in the same calm hand:

Distribution of benefit: to minors not of the subject; to dependents of dependents; to strangers.

Benefit non-attributable by design.

Habl stopped breathing for a moment. Not in surprise—there was nothing theatrical in it—but in the precise sensation of a theory turning inside out.

All his life he had measured his father by the only ledger the world offered: solvency, sobriety, outcome, and reward. Like the rest he labeled his father: failure.

He had never once asked what his father’s losses had purchased; what his father left unclaimed.

The Macallan sat untouched beside his hand.

Habl looked again at the assessment line.

There was no mercy given.

Moral Burden Assessed: Exhausted.

Exhausted. Not forgiven. Not redeemed. Used—completely—to the last of it.

He sat back in his chair as if the room had shifted an inch.

His father had not been a cautionary tale.

He had been—Habl searched for the word and hated it for being accurate—an instrument.

A load-bearing wall everyone leaned on because it was there, because it did not complain, because when it cracked it did so quietly. And smiled.

Habl lowered the pen to the margin and wrote, slowly, as if drafting against himself:

The world calls it failure when it cannot invoice the good.

He stared at his own sentence.

Then, after a moment, he turned the page again, almost afraid of what the next jurisdiction would demand.

He stood as if rising to deliver closing remarks, and looked across the room at the grandfather clock, imagining by these standards how his own case would read.

Morally bankrupt.

* * *

Habl did not sleep.

Before dawn he crossed the study to the low cabinet beneath the window, the one he reserved for things that were neither active nor finished, and removed a thin manila folder, its edges soft from handling.

Attorney Disciplinary Committee

First Judicial Department

He had agreed to review the file weeks earlier, out of habit more than interest. A courtesy assignment. A colleague’s request. Something to be dispatched with a paragraph or two of uncontroversial concurrence.

The respondent was a solo practitioner. Small office in Washington Heights. Immigration and housing work, almost exclusively. Cuban-born. Naturalized. Three children.

The violation was clear.

A nonwaivable conflict of interest, technical but real, arising from successive representation in a landlord–tenant matter that never ripened into harm. No funds misappropriated. No confidences disclosed. No adverse outcome. The rule, however, was explicit. Intent was irrelevant.

Habl flipped through the letters of recommendation again. A dozen of them. Judges. Opposing counsel. Former clients whose gratitude had survived translation into affidavit form.

Meticulous.

Ethical.

The kind of lawyer this system claims to need.

The Committee’s preliminary memorandum lay clipped to the inside cover. Dry. Correct. Relentless.

Clear violation.

Sanction presumptively required.

Deterrence function paramount.

Habl drew a sheet of letterhead from his drawer and fed it into the printer. He read the rule again. It didn’t change.

He began to write.

* * *

Re: Matter of A. R. — Disciplinary Review

The record reflects a clear violation of Rule ___. The applicable conflict provision is nonwaivable, and the respondent does not meaningfully contest its application. I agree that the formal elements of the violation are satisfied.

He paused. The sentence was accurate. Sufficient. He could have stopped there and been done with it.

He continued.

The purpose of the rule, however, is the protection of the public interest, not the mechanical vindication of process. The absence of harm here is not incidental; it is structural. No client was misled. No adverse position was taken. No confidence was exploited. The violation existed entirely in form.

He leaned back, reread, then added a parenthetical—almost reflexively, the way one added dicta that mattered more than holding.

(Indeed, the respondent’s conduct, even in departure from the applicable rule, appears to have produced tangible benefit.)

He stopped. The word benefit sat there, unmodified, as if it belonged.

He crossed it out.

(…appears to have produced nonlocal—)

The pen hovered.

He drew a single line through and revised:

third-party benefits

He nodded once, as if the correction had been requested.

The case for a finding of no cause, accompanied by a formal warning, is sharpened—not softened—by the respondent’s overall posture. Removal from practice would not merely punish error; it would interrupt service to a community for whom alternatives are scarce and trust is hard-won. Whatever deterrent value discipline might serve here must be weighed against the magnified cost of absence.

He signed the letter, folded it, and slid it into an envelope without rereading it a third time.

For a moment, he considered whether the Committee would notice. Whether it would matter.

He thought of his father at the kitchen table, sorting envelopes into stacks that never quite balanced. Groceries and money given to strangers.

Habl sealed the envelope anyway.

At the window, dawn had begun to thin the dark. The city moved as it always did—indifferent, procedural, exacting.

He left the letter on the hall table to be mailed later, knowing it would not come back to him with thanks. Knowing, too, that this was not mercy.

It was accounting.