Friday, April 28, 2006

Visiting the Supreme Court

I've been to Washington DC many times and have seen most of the things there to see. But I've never been to the Supreme Court. In November I found out you can sit in on the complete oral arguments of a case and had planned to do so. But, I'm an idiot and haven't done it yet. The term ended this week and my next chance is October.

Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page and he'd never been to oral arguments either, at least until Monday. He wrote about the experience. "It is an 11-piece orchestra playing a complex legal concerto, and at the end the impulse is to applaud." In a bloated government, the 9 Justices do their own work with the aid of only 37 clerks, ya gotta respect that.

Henniger ends by saying Spector is wrong about televising the Supreme Court. I'm not sure I agree. I don't think it's C-SPAN that's made Congress so dysfunctional. And I'd like to experience some more of the court's "majesty" without having to arrange a trip to DC.

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