May 12, 2026

Truth and Justice on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

By Emily Poler

A couple of weeks ago I started to write this post about the latest Serial podcast, which is titled The Idiot and narrated by New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen. My aim was to use the story of Gessen’s cousin Allen, who was convicted of ordering a hit on his ex-wife, as a jumping-off point for talking about getting clients to face hard truths. I couldn’t quite finish what I was writing though; something just didn’t feel right. 

As I sat on it, I listened to a discussion of prediction markets — platforms where participants can buy and sell shares based on their beliefs of the outcomes of future events — and whether these markets will be significantly regulated by the federal government (my prediction: no). While mulling that over, I realized what I wanted to write about was actually truth, justice, and the “American Way.” Or at least the values and rules that have traditionally underpinned those ideals. 

As anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows, I’m a litigator. That means I have regular interactions with the courts. It also means I spend a lot of time thinking about what’s fair and, while I don’t use this word in daily parlance, what’s just.

I’ve been pondering this a lot more lately because, simply put, it feels like the wheels are coming off the bus. Increasingly, attorneys and their clients are behaving badly, flouting court rules, pursuing arguments that contradict established precedent, and prosecuting opponents with accusations so bizarre and trivial as to seem insane. (If a client tries to involve me in anything like this, I tell them they need to find another lawyer.) Thankfully, in many cases judges and juries continue to do great work rejecting and even condemning such actions. 

Or maybe it just seems like things are going in the wrong direction because of a certain person with a very loud megaphone who is pushing, for example, the second prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey for posting a photo on Instagram of the numbers “86 47” spelled out in seashells that he saw on a beach; the Trump administration claims that constitutes a threat against the president. Is it a coincidence that Comey led the initial investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election? 

The problem here is that as established rules are attacked and perverted, people start to believe that not only can they get away with anything, but that they are right to do so. Everybody else is doing it, so why not me? Look at the case of the Fort Bragg soldier who was involved in the planning of the U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, and allegedly used his (obviously) classified information to bet on its timing in a prediction market and profit to the tune of more than $400,000. 

And, circling back to The Idiot podcast, M. Gessen’s cousin Allen continues to vigorously deny hiring an assassin through an intermediary (actually an undercover FBI agent) to murder his ex-wife despite overwhelming evidence, including recordings of the hiring discussions, that that’s exactly what he did. Why do these people think they can get away with these illegal, immoral and disgusting actions? Because they believe they’re right to do so. That’s what we call delusion, a condition that seems to be on the rise and that no pharmaceutical company can create a drug to combat. 

Getting back to what I’ve seen happening in courtrooms over the past few years, I’m not decrying lawyers advocating zealously on behalf of their clients, which we’re all supposed to do. Nor am I condemning attorneys for sometimes missing a deadline or making an honest oversight. What I’m talking about are people playing really fast and loose with the law or the facts. 

This has always bothered me. I have a pretty strong sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, and I find it upsetting when people aren’t treated fairly and don’t behave toward others in a way that is equitable. And, while I certainly understand and acknowledge that there are often grey areas, I think (or I’d like to think) that most lawyers are also motivated, at least in part, by the idea of making sure things are fair. Now, though, when we’re barraged with pretty much daily examples of people and attorneys flouting the rules in really grotesque ways, I’m more troubled than ever.  

Do these little transgressions matter? YES. In some ways, the legal system is a giant trust exercise, kind of like crossing the street in midtown. It only works because cars don’t go when there is a red light. In the case of the court system, it means you follow the rules: When you lose a case, you pay the amount the court says you owe, or when a court tells you to do something, you don’t do something else (or nothing at all). If rules and rulings are ignored, the system will slowly start to break down, and eventually stop working entirely. And while the consequences of that would be significant for an individual attorney like me, that’s nothing compared to what it will do to our society and every person in it. 

That’s today’s rant. I’m curious to know if other attorneys have similar feelings (I can’t believe it’s just me). Let me know what you think!