Oh. My. Gosh, you guys. Seeing oral arguments at the Supreme Court was SO amazing. I get that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but seriously, you don't have to be a lawyer to appreciate seeing the nation's highest court in action. This is a pretty long post and I'm not offended in the least if you just skim. Or just look at the pictures. Let's be honest, this post is mostly for me to remember how awesome everything was and you probably won't care about the details.
Attending oral arguments at the Supreme Court has been on my list of things to do since we moved here. I decided I better do it now because it will be considerably harder to do next fall! So I checked the Supreme Court calendar and off I went! (If you click on the html version of the calendar, you can see the cases and click on them to get a brief summary of the question presented. I would definitely recommend doing this so you have at least the bare minimum of background understanding so you can follow the oral arguments better. I would also recommend visiting oyez.com and clicking on "cases" to read more about whatever case you are going to attend. The case summaries are totally in plain English and easy to understand and follow.)
The Supreme Court website has a visitor's guide to oral arguments, but of course I wanted to know exactly the best way to be sure to get in so I checked out a few blog posts and found this one to be the most helpful.
The day that worked for me to attend was Monday, March 19th. Since I wasn't sure how popular / controversial these cases were going to be, I had no idea how early to show up. (For big cases, people line up at three in the morning or even stay overnight.) I did search the cases on Google News and they didn't seem to be too popular so I decided to get in line at 6:15 a.m. to make sure I got in (only about the first 50 people in line get in).
Checking out the Capitol across the street.
Watching the sun rise behind the Supreme Court while waiting in line.
T dropped me off and I was eighth in line. I sat on the curb because I knew I didn't want to stand the whole time in my nice wedges. (There aren't written attire rules, but if the helper bees don't think you are dressed nice enough, they won't let you in to see arguments. Business causal dress is a safe bet. I saw quite a few people wearing suits, but none wearing jeans.) The line was on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court. Around 7:30 an officer came and told us the line would be moving to the plaza in front of the Supreme Court and if you left the line you would lose your spot and you must remain standing in line. We all followed him up to the plaza and then we stood in line there.
Getting closer...
Around 8:00 a different officer came and handed out tickets. The tickets were just laminated cardstock with your line number on one side and rules for attending the Supreme Court on the other side. They really are sticklers for only one card per person. We were told we could come back around 8:30 to line up inside. Some people went inside immediately to get in line (it doesn't really matter because you re-line up according to the number on your ticket), others went in to get breakfast at the Supreme Court cafe, and I just sat on a bench in the plaza enjoying the beautiful spring morning.
Then we waited in a line inside the Supreme Court on the first floor. (This is the point where I would recommend taking a bathroom break, just let the officer know where you're going so you don't lose your spot / they don't go up to the Court without you.) Around 9:15 an officer took us up the stairs and told us the rules of the Supreme Court. We were taken to the coat check room on the second floor. Coat check is free and lockers are available for a quarter. Just do the locker, it's faster. Pretty much everything is prohibited from the Supreme Court except watches, your locker key, and a small notebook and pen. After getting a locker we went through one more security check and handed over our line number then were seated at the back of the court (the last security check and seating are first come first serve, not according to line number).
Technically you can bring a sweater into the court as well, but you really won't need one because court is crowded. The chairs are tiny. I'm a relatively small person and my butt barely fit on the seat of the chair. Expect to actually touch your neighbors on both sides pretty much the whole time. I'm SO glad that everyone around me had showered and wasn't wearing heavy perfume. SO glad.
I was seated in the first row of chairs behind the benches for reserved guests of the justices / lawyers / whoever else can pull strings. Even though the benches were cushioned, the special guests with reserved passes were squished in just as tight as we were. This is pretty good view of the interior of the court room (from here) and pretty much exactly where I was sitting (straight across from Chief Justice Roberts!).
It's such a crap shoot where you get seated. Some people had to sit behind those giant pillars. Oh, and in real life all of the chairs are touching, in this photo they are so spread out!Promptly at 10:00 we all stood as the justices entered the room. And then The Court got down to business. I mean, they really got down to business. If all government agencies were as efficient and fast moving as the Supreme Court, it would be wonderful. Before the cases began new members were admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. (Oh, what, like a regular lawyer can argue in front of the Supreme Court? I don't think so) The officer of the court would call a sponsor to the front of the court the sponsor would then nominate their person and Chief Justice Roberts would approve. Seriously less than one minute total per person being admitted to the bar. They all spoke so quickly and moved so fast. The new bar members were sworn in and by 10:10 the first case started.
The first case was Astrue v Caputo. The short version is that after a man died his wife became pregnant with twins via in vitro fertilization. Eighteen months after the man died the twins were born. The wife then tried to claim Social Security survivor's benefits on the twins behalf. The Social Security Administration said the twins weren't eligible because the the twins didn't meet the qualification of: the child must be dependent on an insured individual at the time of the qualified individual’s death. Check out the longer, but still easy to understand version here.
Each lawyer gets exactly 30 minutes to argue (they can save some time to use at the very end for rebuttal) and you better believe they get immediately cut off if they go over. The first lawyer was pretty nervous and for the first 10 minutes I couldn't tell which side he was arguing for (which didn't seem like a promising start). Turns out he was representing the Social Security Administration.
All of the Justices spoke and asked questions except Clarence Thomas (of course, he hasn't spoken during oral arguments since 2005). Sometimes the justices were hard to hear / understand but they really did speak in plain English. Even though I disagree with the judicial activism and views of some of the justices, you cannot deny that all of the justices are extremely bright and quick (and even witty - the justices made a few jokes and landed a few zingers). Really, their minds are just incredible.
There wasn't any precedent for this sort of case so the arguments for and against were pretty wide open. One of the main arguments was about the definition of a child due to some confusing language in the laws congress wrote (in the 1940's) for Social Security survivor's benefits. That whole conversation reminded me of Bill Clinton and "That depends what the definition of "is" is." Anyway, the lawyer for the mother of the twins claimed that the twins were considered "children" because they were a product of a marriage. One of the justices argued that if the father is dead, then according to the law the marriage is over and since the children were conceived after the father was dead then they couldn't be considered a product of the marriage and thus they would be unable to claim survivor's benefits.
Another justice raised the point that according to Florida law (where the case originated) adopted children and step children only have nine months after the father dies to become the dead father's legal children, so the twins in the case clearly missed the deadline.
One of the justices said that benefits for the twins would be within the ideological realm with what Social Security survivor's benefits are intended for, but that the lawyer arguing for the twins wanted too broad of an interpretation. The justice said that if the lawyer had his interpretation the mom could re-marry and use the first husband's sperm for in-vitro fertilization and claim survivor's benefits for the twins. Then if the new husband died the twins would be able to claim survivor's benefits from that man as well.
It was all very interesting and very easy to follow. I think that overall the Court seemed to agree with the SSA that the twins didn't qualify for survivor's benefits the way the current law is written.
There was about a three minute break between cases. Just long enough for people to quickly leave the room if they didn't want to stay for the second case and for new viewers to be brought in. I stayed for the second case because the first one was so interesting and if I had waited in line, I might as well get the most bang for my buck (figuratively speaking). Also, just an interesting note, there were security people roaming about during the arguments and they did not hesitate to remove people if you were falling asleep.
The second case was Southern Union Co V. United States. The easy to read Oyez version is here and the gist of it is Southern Union was illegally storing liquid mercury and the judge fined them $38.1 million dollars ($50,000 was the maximum fine per day of violation and they were in violation for 762 days). Southern Union claimed that the fine laid out by the judge violated their right to trial by jury under the Sixth Amendment.
This case was much more dry and harder to follow because both sides and the justices kept referring to precedent rulings and cases that I was totally unfamiliar with (one of the cases was from the 1800's!). It seemed that the justices were inclined to uphold the prior rulings. It was clear however that the justices didn't care for the lawyer of Southern Union - the lawyer actually cut off some justices while they were speaking. Now, I know that the justices frequently cut into lawyer's spiels, but really, it's just not a wise decision to cut off someone who has the power to sink your case.
After the second case was done we left the courtroom. I noticed a sign in the hallway right next to the courtroom. It said "Fallout Shelter This Way." It had the radioactive signal and a direction arrow and everything. I really wanted to see it, but I didn't think the police officers would appreciate me poking around!
After I fetched my things from the locker they let us leave the Supreme Court down the main steps. I felt pretty important. (To enter and to exit any other time you have to use the side entrances.)
Basically, I loved seeing oral arguments and it was totally worth the time for me, but it might not be for everyone.
The Supreme Court still hasn't ruled on the cases I saw, but hopefully they don't take too much longer! I'm antsy and I don't even have any direct relation to the cases!
How to visit oral arguments sum up:
1. Read up on the cases before hand.
2. If you're going to go, get in line early to make sure you will get in.
3. Bring snacks and a book.
4. Bring a quarter for a locker.
I'm so glad you got to go. Thanks for the long version!!
ReplyDelete