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• in favor of that particular situation or that particular point you could render a favorable interpretation. If you happen to be against it there is a method of rendering an opinion for a legal point that would be contrary. MR. BESS : Mr. Schutte, I think that the way you've got to look at this is that there are not many legal decisions made by the Corporation Counsel ' s office where it is a fifty-fifty deal , where it could go either way. That point has been overemphasized, I think . In my experience with the Corporation Counsel ' s office, we just don ' t have that many. There are always arguments that can be made on one side and. there are arguments that can be made on the other side. But, in my experience, by far in most cases you have a situation where the arguments make a lot more sense on one side than they do the other and as far as I 'm concerned, that is the way I am going to go is where the preponderance of the law is , not where there happens to be an argument. As you know, I can render a legal opinion and the body I have rendered that legal opinion to can choose to disobey it or act in conflict to that opinion and if they do, I feel that I should go ahead and defend them as best as I can giving those arguments that I may have considered initially but I ruled against. So, anyway, I feel that the whole point of an attorney being able to call it any way he wants to, somewhere he is going to find some off the wall case, in Alabama, or something to support his position. True , that argument can be made, but that is not the way the Corporation Counsel ' s office works. Certainly it doesn ' t work that way now. In most cases the law is clear which way to go. Certainly there are situations such as this , Mr. Ishida ' s question , "what does this mean" , and it is such generalized language that you have to go back to the legis- lative history and pour through all these Charter Commission Minutes and see whether or not there is anything that would help you to construe the language and then you go to different words and phrases , books and that kind of thing to assist you in trying to get a handle on what it is saying. The amount of freedom that a lawyer has to construe something is not as broad as everyone would like to think it is, or everyone. .a number of people have made it out to be that we can call it the way we see it. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: There being no further questions, we 'd like to thank you, Mr. Bess , for appearing before the commission at this time. RECESS : At 5 : 20 pm. , the Chair called for a short recess. RECONVENE : The meeting reconvened at5 : 30 p.m. with all members present. -34-