Tenth Justice Influence of the Book Report

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Rick manipulates the law and the legal system for personal gain and aggrandizement, just like Ben Addison, and watching these characters enjoy these manipulations is what creates enjoyment on the part of the reader as a sort of naughty thrill.

One could even argue that the entire premise of the book exploits the degree to which the legal system has been corrupted and become incredibly malleable and too easily manipulated. The word "corruption" most often calls actions like bribery or kickbacks to mind, and while there are examples of this type of corruption in the Tenth Justice this is not the type of corruption that is truly insidious or causal of the plot in the novel. Instead, it is the illegality -- or at least the alegality -- of the structure of the Supreme Court as presented by Melzer (which is likely rooted in some truth, if exaggerated in the fictional world) that creates the power structures and conflicts that allows the plot to take place. The Constitution of the United States establishes the Supreme Court, but says nothing of law clerks being legally employable and paid for by federal dollars, and certainly says nothing about law clerk fresh out of law school being responsible for the research and interpretative acumen to effectively render Supreme Court decisions. The Court is very specifically described, and while it would be foolish to attempt to read a full rationale for the Court's design into the subtext of the Constitution it can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that the foundational body of law in the land was not intended to give supreme judicial power to a group of relatively unknown individuals who were not appointed to the Court and who had no practical experience as lawyers or judges.

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Altering the Court in this fashion places the Court itself outside the law, operating in a no-man's land that lacks real control or definition. It is precisely because there is so much ambiguity and grey area that Addison is able to do the things he does, both his initial creation of the central conflict of the novel and his ongoing attempts to redress the wrongs he has committed and restore "balance" to this bastardized Court.

Breaking the law is generally seen as sexier than keeping it, given the typical tone, theme, and required steaminess of the legal thriller genre. Melzer's characters and admittedly his readers seem to agree with this perspective, as it is in the manipulation of the law and often in the breaking of it that excitement and action is found. None of the characters presented are wholly innocent, not even the venerable Justice Hollis who never seems to be at work and is thus guilty by absenteeism. In a world like this, the law merely becomes the rules of a game that were meant to be broken......

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