Sorkin got the idea for the play from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and was serving a three-year stint with the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. She was going to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to defend a group of Marines who had come close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins during the first act of the musical "La Cage aux Folles" while bartending at the Palace Theatre on Broadway.