Sunday, April 26, 2009

Blog to Watch: DailyWrit

I am not much of a fan of legal blogs. But I met a young man the other day who blogs on the Supreme Court. He's a star on the rise.

My youngest son and I were bleary-eyed when we stumbled from a cab in front of the United States Supreme Court at about 3:30 a.m. one morning this past week. We wanted to make sure we got one of the few seats reserved for the public for argument in the case of Ricci, et al. v. DeStafano, et al.

We were the 13th and 14th persons in line. Ahead of us were two college students, one from Columbia and the other from the University of Texas, Austin. Both knew far more about the Supreme Court than I ever did, or will. One of the young men had even submitted an amicus brief in the case.

Waiting on line is one of my least favorite things. But I had promised Joshua we'd see an argument, and so we waited. Although my firm's name is on the brief for Ricci et al. that was not sufficient cause for the Court to spring a couple of seats for my son and I. Indeed, the Court did not even see fit to assign reserved seats to the plaintiffs in the action. There is something unseemly about a public court that will pass out reserved seats to the well-heeled, but deny seating to a party. Power and privilege matter, even at the Supreme Court.

So we waited, and listend as the two young men ahead of us talked. It was dazzling, really. I had the sense that I was in the presence of future justices, or, at a minimum, the next George Stephanopoulus. Here is a link to DailyWrit, the blog page of one of these precocious scholars. http://dailywrit.com/about/.