Nine Supreme Court judges will soon decide four history-making cases. Eight of them will split along party lines four to four. The ninth judge, holding the swing vote, will tip the scales of justice. He's a good man, a fine man, and, unknown to nearly everyone, a dying man-barely kept alive by machines in a very private hospital.

High-powered Washington attorney Jerry Green is one of the privileged few who discovers American justice rides on the rise and fall of a respirator. Now he's been called by the President himself to do something about it. It's a hunt for truth that will arouse his darkest suspicions... force him to make a shocking choice... and save the legitimacy of American justice. Or shatter it forever...