Late one October night, Supreme Court Justices Abraham Rosenberg and Glenn Jensen were murdered. Both murders were perfectly executed crimes. The murdered left no evidence and no clue for the government to pick up on.

But Darby Shaw, a brilliant law student at Tulane, thinks she has the answer. After days of skipping classes and digging in the library's computers, she found an obscure connection between the two justices. She put together her beliefs in a wildlly speculative brief that builds a strong case against a most unlikely suspect. It was known as "The Pelican Brief."

Her suspect had very powerful friends. One evening, outside a New Orleans restaurant, she nearly escaped an assassin's car bomb which was meant for her and Thomas Callahan, a professor at Tulane whom she had an affair with. Days ago, Darby told the brief to Callahan, who passed it off to Gavin...