Covering the Supreme Court
June 27, 2005
There was a strong possibility, reported the Post, that Rehnquist would retire today. It was the end of the court session, and that combined with some scheduling moves by the White House made many think that this would be the day for a retirement announcement. It did not turn out to be quite so eventful..
I figured I should get a closer look at the Supreme Court, which after all is only a block from the buildings where Emily and I study each day. As I approached the Supreme Court I was surprised to find that the front sidewalk was staked-out by reporters from each of the major networks and CNN. In fact, the guy standing in the spotlight and talking was a correspondent I had often seen on CNN. The sky was broken with clouds, and light showers had passed over recently, so the umbrellas were out in force, covering the cameras and carefully coiffed hair.
At first I felt a little guilt about brazenly taking pictures of the media.. but quickly I remembered that this is what they do for a living.. take pictures of people. So they were hardly going to object to my photography. Some notes on this art of correspondence: the blonde woman who worked for one of the networks stood on a little plastic box and wore no shoes. A reminder that one never knows how that formally dressed person looks just below the gaze of the camera. Also one should not underestimate the number of people involved in the whole operation. I have tried to catch the mass of cameras and wires and chairs and lunches that abounded. Watching their attention to the details of appearance I was struck that these were actors.. not spectators, at least in my more philosophic sense.. not people trying to understand the world, but rather struggling to advance in someone’s opinion..
I also stopped to listen to a man in a blue striped shirt who held a Bible in his hand and continuously bent forward and then backward.. all the while lecturing the Bible-bearing young people that surrounded him in a circle about the connection of God and law. I did not listen too closely, and you can probably all fill in the blanks of his speech.. but I began to think about the fascination that conservative Christians have with the courts, and law in general. Since the beginning of my life I have had the knowledge that the highest court somehow held the destiny of the nation in its hands. I doubt that my friends with liberal backgrounds were raised to see the court in quite the same searing light. Now it is all within the conservative grasp..
The motto on the pediment of the Supreme Court building reads: “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.” And of course the Supreme Court resides at the tip top of the American legal system.. It is a legal system that I wish were a little more approachable. The tours and open doors give the Supreme Court an open feeling, but those lower tiers of the legal system are more distant.. and the first thing that comes to mind when I think about our legal system is how expensive it is. The wheels of equal justice take a lot of greasing to move.
The court itself is bigger than one expects. It was in Luxor, Egypt that I was last astounded at the sheer size of columns.. and these are similarly big. That kind of sheer size does not come across well in pictures. The ornaments on doors seemed to be “Federalist” in style.. but, then, I think anything with a bald eagle on it is “Federalist.”
