I started to develop a broader sense of the federal, state, and military legal systems. It was no real surprise to learn that the law is often unrelated to—and often quite at odds with—commonly held notions of justice. But the logistics and bureaucratic machinery of the system fascinated me. The admissibility or inadmissibility of important evidence in court, for one thing, floored me. I came to understand that the question of guilt mattered less than the ability of one party to prove something with some inspired procedural maneuver.
