In a quiet courtroom, a judge demanded an old man remove a cheap medal. He thought he was teaching a lesson on respect. He was about to get one himself, from a past forged in fire. You have to understand, a courtroom is its own little kingdom. It has a smell—old paper, floor polish, and the faint, anxious sweat of a hundred Mondays. It has a sound—a low, asthmatic hum from the fluorescent lights overhead, the shuffling of feet on worn linoleum, the rustle of files that hold pieces of people’s li