Last weekend I was working on an appellate brief in a case that had its origins in a claim of race discrimination. I was on the losing end in the trial court, but not yet ready to throw in the towel. Nor was my client.

In the evenings I have been reading with fascination Harper Lee’s recently published novel, “Go Set a Watchman.” I read the book with the same macabre fascination that people in slow traffic have when they crawl by a terrible multivehicle pileup.