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// Chapter X: Due Process's Closing Statement 
// Story: PRAT 
// by Integral Archer 
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“My turn, my turn!” he cried, leaping from his chair, his wings flapping.

“Hm?” said Petty Nicety, who had taken off her glasses and was making as if to go. “Oh, all right,” she continued, sitting back down with a grunt. She waved a hoof at him. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you, Commissioner!”

There was an eerie silence, much unlike that of any preceding interlude: the room was dead to the ear, save for the rustle of shuffling papers, but alive to the eye: a quiet, but intensely animated pegasus hovered on the stage in front of them. Never before had they seen the little lawyer so lively: they could almost see the roots of his eyes, so wide were they; the commissioners had to hold onto their papers lest they be blown away, so brisk was the flapping of his wings; and so wide was his grin, that the spectators could not be certain that the papers he was shuffling were not cutouts from some lewd magazine.

But, all of a sudden, he was silent. He turned, his head lifted, looking straight at the audience. At first, they thought that, by some sleight of hoof he had made his papers vanish; but, upon closer inspection, they saw them crumpled in a giant ball and stuffed in his coat’s breast pocket. Whatever internal agitation had been stirring his features was now gone; his solemnity seemed to demand of all listening to him the same, and those who saw him found it impossible to refuse: even the babies had stopped their crying; even the tubercular had stopped their coughing. But Princess Celestia sighed; she could not but see the gaudy yellow walls of a high school auditorium with their peeling paper around him, and she could not but see the commissioners with their raised eyebrows behind him.

“Sir Ignis Fatuus,” he said. “Princess Fair Day. Dr. Green Flash. Names that hardly need any elaboration. Before Ignis Fatuus, pegasi had to, through hours of wing-breaking, laborious effort, bring about the weather each day with their bare hooves; Ignis Fatuus developed the spell that powers Cloudsdale’s weather factory, and forever improved the efficiency of weather generation—it’s estimated that because of his invention one pegasus is able to do the work of twenty. Princess Fair Day designed the Los Pegasus experiment, which showed that hexes are a subset of charms, thus resolving a bevy of paradoxes that had plagued magical theory for centuries. And Green Flash . . . now here’s a stallion whose discovery in the field of magic had wide-ranging philosophical and social implications: he showed that the magic of unicorns comes from the same source as that of pegasi, and of that of earth ponies—indeed, if there was ever a pony who has done the most to the reconciliation and harmony of the races, it is he, Dr. Flash, by showing that, though we differ in body, we are exactly the same in spirit.

“Why do I mention the names of these unicorns who differ in time and fields of study? Because each was an alumnus of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

“A lot of irreverent and irrelevant things have been said in the past few weeks, both on my part and by that of the complainant: It has been stated that the complainant was refused matriculation into the School because of his race; we have confirmed that that is indeed the case. It has been said that discrimination is self-evident, both from the dean’s letter and from the interviewer’s comments; we have confirmed that this is the case. We have brought Dr. Schopenhoofer to give his opinion of the school; the complainant has used the fact that he doesn’t teach any of the magic courses as proof of institutionalized discrimination in the school. But none of this matters, in the slightest, because earth ponies cannot perform unicorn magic.”

Due Process paused, taken aback by a slight ripple of laughter through the crowd. He couldn’t tell whether it had been laughter at the state of a world in which it was necessary for an attorney to utter such an obvious statement in a legal tribunal, or whether the laugh had been disbelief that such a pony would dare to go against the prevailing cultural narrative. He had to keep speaking: the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced it was the latter.

“Not once, anywhere in recorded history, has an earth pony demonstrated his capacity for unicorn magic. But I can assure you, the second there is one, my client’s school will bring him in at its own expense in order to give him every honor and degree imaginable. That hasn’t happened, and it will never happened. That’s because being a unicorn is a bona fide occupational requirement of study at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. And this has been easily shown.

“It has been shown that the discrimination was adopted rationally, for there is no reasonable, colorable account of an earth pony performing any of the spells required in the curriculum. It has been shown that the discrimination was adopted in good faith, as the purpose of the School is to produce the thinkers that our society needs, thinkers in a very specific field of study: unicorn magic. It has also been shown that the requirement of being a unicorn is rationally connected to the job, for accommodating an earth pony student would require an entirely new curriculum, new teachers, and new equipment—an undue hardship that would fundamentally alter the nature and purpose of the organization. And I never remember the complainant’s once showing how the School’s discrimination negatively affected him.

“I’ll keep my statement short, as everything that I can possibly say on the matter has been said. But let’s be very clear about what this case really concerns. The present case has very little to do with Her Majesty, with Mr. Hearty Bucks, or any of us. Rather, this case concerns the legitimacy of the School for Gifted Unicorns per se, not only legally but morally.

“By ruling in favor of the defendant or the complainant, the Tribunal will now decide whether the School for Gifted Unicorns is legitimate or not, and I urge you, Commissioners, to not weigh lightly the implications your decision will render. If you rule in favor of the School, you will give a sanction to not only all the advancements that its alumni have made in the past—which have benefited unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies alike—but to all the ones that they may make in the future, of whose nature and utility we, in the present, can only but speculate. But should you rule in favor of the complainant, you damn not only the School but everything it has and will produce—and in so doing you damn the past, for the gifts it has given us; the present, for the resulting ease and luxury those who live in it enjoy; and the future, for its fulsome potential.

“It is the explicit policy of this Tribunal to not resolve every possible case of discrimination, but rather to resolve the ones that would go the furthest to remedying immediate harm and rectifying systematic discrimination. I ask the Tribunal: what immediate harm does the School pose to society? What systematic discrimination is the School guilty of perpetuating? It can’t possibly be the mere fact that one of the conditions its students must be is that of being a unicorn, for this would not be the first case of discrimination to receive not only the blessing of society but that of the Tribunal itself: I cite the case of Rapeseed v. Wallflower, where the Tribunal ruled that a self-defense course for mares only was not a breach of the Act, as mares, per the Tribunal’s opinion: ‘face a unique risk to violent crime, from which unique protection needs be supplied.’ So, clearly, the mere fact that the School discriminates is not enough to rule against it, and the fact that it educates the thinkers and inventors of the future proves the necessity of its existence—if it’s not unreasonable to suggest that mares, and society as a result, would benefit from training specifically tailored for them, why, then, would it be so unreasonable to suggest the same for unicorns given their unique abilities?

In conclusion, the Tribunal will now proceed to do one of two things: either it will decide to capitulate to the notions that happen to be socially and politically in vogue right now—that is, society is divided between the exploiters and the exploited—or it will faithfully and consistently uphold the principle that institutions that promote the growth of select individuals, such that we as a society may reap the benefits of the future, are just and good: faithfully, because such is the value upon which our society was founded; consistently, because it has done so in the past.

“Thank you.”

Due Process stumbled and was nearly knocked off his feet: so unexpected, so ferocious, and so deafening was the applause that followed. No amount of protest from the commissioners was able to mitigate it; forward, upward, and across the room leaped the cheers of the crowd.

Due Process grabbed the pitcher of water from the table, downed it, and wiped the residue from his lips with a triumphant flick of his hoof, in the same manner as a runner who, having completed a marathon, is heedless of his place, and considers himself the winner.