Miss Jean Louise, Stand Up
It was cold and snowing at 5:50 AM when I arrived at the United States Supreme Court building. A quick count revealed there were already thirty-four people in line ahead of me, but because I was among the first fifty people to show up, it looked like I would get a seat for oral arguments. So, I tightened the zipper on my coat and settled in.
I am not an attorney, but I have great respect for the relatively rational and non-political atmosphere of the Court. There are laws, precedents, and rules of engagement, and when the Supreme Court makes a decision, a written explanation — based in the law — is provided. Unlike the other two branches of government, the Court is committed to examining evidence and achieving fairness based on legal precedent and the mandates of the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court building was designed to be a Temple of Justice, but it is also a sanctuary of evidence, reason, and equality, where poor people can have their grievances heard and—when the facts merit—win the day. I had come to hear Encino Motorcars v. Navarro and McCoy v. Louisiana, but my primary goal was just to watch the Court in action and, in particular, to see Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Sometime around 7:00 AM, with dawn still twenty minutes away, I caught sight of a small figure — a woman in a heavy coat, leaning forward with her head down — walking very slowly across the sidewalk toward the steps to the building. Quietly one of the Supreme Court Police officers came down to offer his arm, and the two made their way up the eight steps that lead to the plaza and across to a door at the left of the main stairs into the building. I could not be certain the woman in the coat was Justice Ginsburg. Moving closer would have risked losing my place in line, and as they inched their way across the snowy surface, the two created a private scene I would not have wanted to disturb. Many people work in the Supreme Court building, but it seemed unlikely that more than one employee would have that posture and slow pace.
At 7:30 an officer lined us all up on the plaza, handed out numbered tickets to oral arguments, and let us into the building where we could get warm. After another two hours of waiting, I was guided to a bench in the back of the chamber, and a few minutes later, we stood as the Marshal of the Court announced the entrance of the Chief and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States and called the familiar “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” The robed Justices emerged from behind red velvet curtains and took their seats. We sat down, and the session began.
Both of the cases heard that day were important. The first case, Encino Motorcars v. Navarro was about the question of whether the over 100,000 automobile service advisors in the United States are eligible for overtime pay. Currently, mechanics and salespeople at car dealerships get overtime, but service advisors — the people who greet you in the service department, help determine what your car needs, and write up estimates — do not.
The second case, McCoy vs. Louisiana was about a difficult legal issue. In an effort to save his client from the death penalty in a Louisiana trial, Robert McCoy’s attorney told the jury that McCoy had committed the crimes — three murders — and argued for mercy in sentencing. As it turned out, the strategy failed, and McCoy was sentenced to death anyway. Despite considerable evidence against him, the defendant had maintained his innocence from the beginning and had forbidden his attorney from admitting guilt, but his attorney went ahead anyway. After the trial, McCoy appealed, claiming his attorney had failed to provide adequate assistance of counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. The decision in the case would determine whether a lawyer who thought it was the best strategy available could admit guilt against the wishes of the client.
Each case was allotted an hour for arguments, and throughout this period, all of the Justices were very active in the discussions — except for the characteristically quiet Justice Clarence Thomas. The remaining eight Justices peppered the attorneys with questions, proposed hypothetical cases, and tried to find weaknesses in the arguments. Justice Ginsburg was the first out of the gate, interrupting Paul D. Clement, the attorney representing Encino Motorcars, to ask a question about the various jobs in automobile dealerships, and she was among the most active questioners throughout the morning. She hunched over her desk, barely visible above the wooden facade, but her soft, strong voice could be heard very clearly over the public address system. On more than one occasion, her questions seemed to knock the attorneys back on their heels.
The time passed quickly, and suddenly, at the end of the second case, Chief Justice Roberts said, “Thank you, counsel. The case is submitted.” The Supreme Court Police officers directed us to stand as the Justices rose from their seats. Eight of the Justices quickly disappeared behind the curtains, and then we all became aware that we were waiting for the last Justice to leave. Approximately two hundred people — lawyers, guests, clerks, police officers, members of the press, and spectators — waited silently for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to make her way out of the room. We stood for what must have been ten or fifteen seconds, as she slowly walked behind her chair and out through an opening in the curtains. It was a wonderful moment of gratitude and respect, and I could not help but recall a similar scene in another courtroom.
In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the children, Jem, Dill, and Scout, sneak into the courtroom to watch Atticus defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been falsely accused of raping a white woman. The children have been forbidden from attending, but ignoring their father’s orders, they watch the trial from up in the “colored balcony.” Of course, when the verdict is announced, Atticus has lost, and Tom is found guilty. The room quickly empties, leaving only Atticus, a lonely figure who carefully picks up his papers, puts them in his briefcase, and slowly walks down the aisle of the courtroom. But up in the balcony no one has moved. Like my fellow visitors to the Supreme Court, the occupants of the balcony silently stand as Atticus passes. Scout describes the scene this way:
Someone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus’s lonely walk down the aisle.
“Miss Jean Louise?”
I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes’s voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s:
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin‘.”
At this point in the 1962 movie—adapted from the novel by Horton Foote and starring Gregory Peck—I always cry, and as I stood with everyone else, waiting for Justice Ginsburg to make her way out of the courtroom, I felt the same swell of emotion. The same sense of respect and reverence. Justice Ginsburg is not the most senior member of the Court. Justices Anthony Kennedy and
Clarence Thomas have served longer. But at eighty-four she is the oldest serving member, and her life has been one of great challenge and accomplishment. In 1959 when she graduated at the top of her Columbia University Law School class, she couldn’t get a job. Sandra Day O’Connor, who would become the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court, had suffered the same fate upon graduating from Stanford Law School seven years earlier.
Before being nominated for the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton, Ginsburg was the co-founder of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and in 1973 she became general counsel of the ACLU. In a 2013 profile in the New Yorker, on the occasion of Justice Ginsburg’s twentieth anniversary on the Court, Jeffrey Toobin called her “by far, the current Court’s most accomplished litigator.”
Before Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., became a judge, he argued more cases than Ginsburg did before the Justices, but most of them were disputes of modest significance. Ginsburg, during the nineteen-seventies, argued several of the most important women’s-rights cases in the Court’s history.
So, I stood with the others, waiting for this powerful little woman to make her way out of the courtroom. She would never know me or, for that matter, most of the people who are grateful for what she has done, but that wasn’t important. The time spent shivering on the sidewalk and waiting in line was a small price to pay for the chance to offer this quiet moment of appreciation. We stood because Ruth Bader Ginsburg was passing.
Stuart Vyse is a psychological scientist and author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, which won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association, and Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money. His work has appeared in Observer, The Atlantic, The Good Men Project, and Tablet. He writes the “Behavior & Belief” column for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
