We all like to believe that we are moral people, don’t we? We’re good people. Or good enough compared to our neighbors. And if we ever act in ways that violate some moral code, we must have a good excuse for doing it, right? 

In 1995, a man named Robert Lee Brock was serving time in a Virginia prison for breaking and entering and grand larceny. While serving his time, Brock sued the Virginia prison system for various alleged offenses, but every lawsuit was rejected.

So Brock tried a new approach: he sued himself for getting drunk and committing crimes that violated his civil rights and religious beliefs. As he wrote in his legal filing, “For violating my religious beliefs, I want to pay myself 5 million dollars, but ask the state to pay it in my behalf since I can't work and am a ward of…