Will the Supreme Court Unravel Public Employee Unions?
In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a 1981 novel by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, twin brothers in a port village stalk and murder a neighbor for the supposed crime of deflowering their sister. García Marquez’s anonymous narrator, tracing the roots of the crime years later, finds that almost everyone in the nameless town knew that Pablo and Pedro Vicario were planning to murder Santiago Nasar; no one, however, warned the victim or stopped the killers.
Townspeople had different reasons. Some thought the killers were bluffing, or that they changed their minds after a scolding from the mayor. Still others meant to pass on a warning but, distracted by a wedding feast and a visit from the local bishop, simply forgot. A few did not bother because they concluded that the murder was inevitable, and thus the victim was in effect dead already.
The authorities later sent in a magistrate to investigate—but “at the conclusion of his excessive diligence,” the magistrate had not “found a
