Court Camp

I've decided to refer to the Supreme Court Institute as Court Camp, because that is a better name for it. All of the teachers got in on Thursday and were super excited- they all remind me, in their own way, of some of the best teachers I ever had. This makes sense because these are the teachers who wanted to spend part of their summer vacations doing an intensive course on the Supreme Court- you sort of have to like teaching in order to subject yourself to that, I think. They're a great and diverse group- a couple former lawyers, a cop, a woman who teaches at a juvenile detention center, people from all over the US with all their delightful accents. They came in already knowing a lot about the Court (because some of them teach ONLY constitutional law at the high school level) and so it has been an engaging experience for me as I have tried to answer their very intelligent questions without saying something completely incorrect.

This isn't from Court Camp. But I wanted to post it anyway. It's from a firm reception that I went to the day before Court Camp started. I went to the reception because the name of the firm was the same name as the name the devil chooses for himself in the Twilight Zone episode "Escape Clause." The bacon twists were as good as you would hope they could be. 

The first night of the institute we had a reception at another law firm that happens to have a giant building right next to the Mall. 

The rooftops in DC are starting to get a little ridiculous.

The next day (Friday) we did more Court Camp and then went to the Supreme Court itself. The teachers were especially keen to be in the Lawyer's Lounge to hear a talk from a couple of the longterm clerks about how the Court runs. 

No pictures are allowed in the actual Supreme Court courtroom.

Today (Saturday) we did three cases in Court Camp. I was slightly unexpectedly designated the question-answerer for one of the cases, which seemed silly to me since two of the people who wrote amicus briefs for the case were in the room with me. I kept looking at them to see if I was saying something factually wrong, even though I have read the entire case quite a few times and would have otherwise felt very comfortable discussing it.

The last activity of the day was a big moot court session- the teachers had three hours to prepare and perform a moot court and then argue in Georgetown's Supreme Court Institute, which is designed to look a lot like the interior of the Supreme Court. I got to give the "oyez, oyez" speech and bang the gavel to start it off- a great honor.