A LOAC Dream—Or How You know When You Need a Few Days Off

It was in the middle of an intense week of briefings and meetings in Israel last week that I awoke in my hotel room from a dream in which, my amused son told me, I had been babbling audibly, if not coherently. I almost never remember my dreams. But this one stuck with me and, I suspect, might amuse a few Lawfare readers, as it did my son and me.

My sleep talking, you see, was the closing argument I was making to a court in New Zealand, where I found myself facing charges for violating an important local ordinance: A prohibition against eating lunch outdoors without wearing an insignia visible at a distance. I had decided to challenge this law by violating it, had done do, been arrested and charged, and was now before a jury making my case.

While in real life, I was mumbling inanities, in my dream I was making a stirring summation: "I do not question," I said to the court grandly, "that this law may once have served a valid purpose—though a reasonable person is entitled to wonder what that purpose could possibly have been. Be that as it may, any such purpose has by now certainly outlived its time."

And with that stirring call to Kiwi justice, I woke up and realized I needed a few days off.

Lawfare will be in hiberation the next few days and publishing on a reduced schedule through the New Year. Here's wishing a Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it and a Happy New Year to readers everywhere.