Like this:

Back in my first week at at the National Law Journal, the paper’s Supreme Court corespondent Tony Mauro invited me to join him for a hearing at the court sometime during the session, as is his normal custom with the paper’s intern each semester.

Monday was definitely the right day to tag along. The court was packed because at 1 p.m., the court was set to hear Skilling v. United States, featuring Jeffrey Skilling, the former president of Enron.

I met up with Tony and six interns from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Tony is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Supreme Court, having covered the judicial body for the past 25 years, first at USA Today and then at The Legal Times, which merged with The National Law Journal last year.

Reporters aren’t allowed access to most of the building. Journalists aren’t allowed to walk around to the areas where the clerks work because of worries that the clerks will leak stories before opinions are announced, which apparently used to be an issue.

Tony told me that for a short time, reporters weren’t even allowed to go to the court’s library because of fear that reporters would look at which books were lying around and try to deduct how judges would decide on opinions. This silly policy has since changed, though the court’s prohibition against protesting on the building’s steps remains in place as part of an effort to protect the court’s immunity from outside influences.

By the way, it is legal to protest on the steps of Congress.

Inside the building, Tony showed us the press room. The room was actually quite small, consisting of a bunch of little cubicles for the 20 or so reporters who regularly cover the court.

In the chamber, the other interns and I were cramped into the left side behind a bunch of pillars, while Tony went to his normal spot in the center. From my view, I had a clear view of justices Sotomayor, Breyer, Thomas, Scalia and Roberts and the lawyers for both sides.

Skilling, who was convicted of everything under the sun back in 2006, was challenging his trial on main counts. His lawyer argued that the honest services statue which Skilling was charged under is unconstitutionally vague. He also argued his trial was inherently unfair because it was held in Houston, home of Enron, despite the regular voir dire process to decide who would be on the jury.

The hour hearing was intense. Skilling’s lawyer was speaking for about 3 minutes before Sotomayor was questioning him for details about how the voir dire process was unjust in the Houston trial. The plaintiff’s lawyer spoke all of two sentences before Breyer was slamming him with his own concerns that the process may been rushed.

Except for Thomas, who hasn’t said anything in a trial in four years, each of the justices definitely made their presence known in the hour-long hearing, which felt considerably longer because of the trial’s intensity.

The experience was awesome. I think I’d be pretty much content for life with Tony’s job.

Advertisement