Some readers might think Edwards has been disbarred. He hasn’t. He was indicted in June 2011 on six felony counts, accused of using campaign funds to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter, a woman he hired to make a video for his 2008 presidential run. One reason Edwards did not plead guilty to a reduced charge — he had the chance — was that it might have involved disbarment. “Friends said he was loath to lose his law license,” the New York Times reported in 2011. “He has expressed interest in practicing public-service law.”

Edwards was back in the courtroom recently, suing an emergency-room doctor for “brain damage and physical injuries that a 4-year-old Virginia boy received in December 2009 when he was an infant in the care of Pitt County Memorial Hospital,” according to the Raleigh News-Observer. The plaintiffs had already won a $13 million settlement from the hospital involved; the jury deadlocked in the case against the doctor.

“I really loved being back in the courtroom,” Edwards told the News-Observer. “It really felt like a gift for me.”