“We always joked that Jimmy Stewart’s going to play him in the movie. He’s the picture of rectitude – a charming, engaging, funny guy, but one who set a tone for the office about doing the right thing, not necessarily about winning every case.” So said Steven R. Peiken, describing former U.S. deputy attorney general James B. Comey, with whom Mr. Peiken worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, in an article that appeared on Thursday, May 17, in the New York Times.

Jimmy Stewart, of course, is the exemplar of the American Everyman – humble, self-effacing, and principled. Mr. Comey, by virtually all accounts, fits the Stewart mold. The Wall Street Journal  reports (subscription required) that he is “known for his disarming chuckle and impeccable reputation” and quotes the written statement of a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp., where Mr. Comey now works as a general counsel, that “Jim exemplifies the ethical principles and values-based culture championed by Lockheed Martin.”

Mr. Comey and his character have come under the spotlight because of his dramatic testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15. On the evening of Wednesday, March 10, 2004, Mr. Comey – serving as acting attorney general while Attorney General John Ashcroft recovered in hospital from pancreatitis – rushed to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room when he learned that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales, then serving as White House counsel, were on their way to the hospital to meet with Mr. Ashcroft. Just hours before Mr. Ashcroft fell ill, he and Mr. Comey had decided that the Justice Department would be unable to certify the legality of the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. As acting attorney general, Mr. Comey had refused to sign the certification and he realized that Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were probably seeking to make an “end run” around him by securing Mr. Ashcroft’s signature at the hospital.

Reading Mr. Comey’s account of the events that transpired at Mr. Ashcroft's hospital bed, one is reminded not so much of the Jimmy Stewart Everyman than of the Everyman of the Middle Ages – the hapless mortal facing death who witnesses a bedside struggle between angels and demons for his soul. “I sat down in an armchair by the head of the attorney general’s bed,” Mr. Comey related.

The two other Justice Department people stood behind me. And Mrs. Ashcroft stood by the bed holding her husband’s arm. And we waited.

And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there – to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was – which I will not do.

And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me – drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier – and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, “But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general.”

A medieval image of this scene would conveniently identify the angels with wings and the demons with horns. In the polarized political environment of America today, there is no less interest in sanctifying or demonizing Mr. Comey's role in the drama that unfolded in Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) recast the Senate Judiciary Committee as a confessional for Mr. Comey. “He had been carrying this weight around inside him and wanted the appropriate opportunity to get it off his conscience,” Mr. Schumer opined. “When you watched him, he was both pained and relieved.” On the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, a less charitable view prevailed (“Wiretap Tales,” May 17, 2007; subscription required). It cast the hearings as a “full length docudrama,” with Mr. Comey’s “spirited retelling” offering an important strand for the Democrats who, it alleges, “are spinning a yarn about shady deeds perpetrated in a hospital room at night.” A whiff of sulphur rises from the Journal’s ominous reminder that the incident in Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room occurred on the eve of the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004.

Lawyers like their saints as much as anyone, and also know how quickly one can be demonized for making an unpopular decision or taking a controversial stand. In truth, most lawyers are neither saints nor sinners. Critics of John Ashcroft, surely one of the more demonized attorneys general in recent memory, may have been taken aback by the man of principle who rose from the hospital bed in Mr. Comey’s testimony. Mr. Comey – a reluctant witness whose story would probably have remained secret but for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing – is nothing more nor less than a lawyer who was trying to do his job.

In an interview with PBS’s Frontline earlier this spring, Washington lawyer Suzanne Spaulding described the duties of a lawyer in a national security context, a description that could apply to any lawyer in government service. “One of the things you worry about a lot is remembering who your client is. There is a real temptation to think that your client is that executive branch official who’s asking you the question or who you’re advising. And it’s important to remember that your client is the American public and the Constitution and that sometimes you have to tell the official who thinks that you are their lawyer and that they are your client news that they don’t want to hear; that in fact they can’t undertake the activity that they’d like to undertake, because it is in violation of law or the Constitution.” These twin tasks of the government lawyer -- remaining faithful to the American public and to what the law and the Constitution require -- are on what the rule of law depends.

In the medieval morality play Everyman, Everyman finds himself facing death deserted by everything except his good deeds, uncertain of his final judgment until an angel descends in the closing lines to claim his soul. Lawyers too spend much of their time working in the face of uncertain judgment. The law needs neither saints nor sinners, just everymen and women trying to do the right thing.