The Supreme Court of the United States are ultimate symbol of law and order.

But in a single night, two of its justices will be brutally assassinated.

A thousand miles away in New Orleans,

a lone law student has pieced together who did the killings,

and why,

and created a document that has become known

in the corridors of power as the Pelican Brief.

Now she has become a target,

and the only person she can trust is an investigative journalist.

Everyone I've told about to brief is dead.

If this thing reaches us deep and goes as high as we think it does, these men will do anything not to be exposed.

Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, the Pelican Brief.

The Pelican Brief. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade.

I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section.

And I'm John Gans. I'm a freelance writer. I have a substack newsletter called On Popular Front, and I'm working on a book about American

politics in the early 1990s.

Today we are back to the world of the legal thriller with the 1993 film The Pelican Brief,

directed by Alan J. Pacula, Pekula. I've never actually said his name out loud.

And starring Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, John Hurd, Tony Goldwyn, William Atherton, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, lots of people that we like, people that should be familiar to you if you've watched the movie in the 80s or 90s.

So here is a short

plot synopsis after an assassin kills two Supreme Court justices. Tulane University law

student Darby Shaw writes a legal brief detailing her theory on why they were killed.

...