Listening to Justice Scalia

Every week, there are guest lecturers for the congressional interns.  Throughout the entire summer, I have not had a chance to attend one until last Monday.  Monday’s guest speaker was to be Justice Scalia and this was one of the few lectures that required an RSVP. The Thursday before the lecture all of the interns were allowed to email in to reserve our spot. Within the first five minutes of the opening of the RSVP window, over 1,000 interns emailed their RSVP. With the limited seating in the Supreme Court room they were only able to take a little over 200 interns on a first come, first serve basis. I was lucky enough to be one of the few who RSVP’d early enough to get a spot at the lecture.
We were told to arrive 45 minutes early, where we stood in line waiting to get into the Supreme Court room. Once we were allowed in, they led us single file into the seats in the room. Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA) entered the room first where he gave us his advice for interning in D.C. and then introduced Justice Scalia.

Justice Scalia had an intimidating initial presence but quickly started making a joke here and there and opening up to us.  He started by telling us his main piece of advice he wanted to get across to us; don’t judge judges. He explained that so many people solely base their opinions on the Justices by if they voted for a specific case in the way they wanted them to. They do not pay attention to the fact that the Justices are only interpreting the laws, not writing them. He feels that most of the people mad at them should be looking across the street to the representatives.

After the first 15 minutes of Justice Scalia’s lecture, he opened the floor up to questions. Some people questioned him about specific issues whereas other questions were broader. My favorite question happened to be, “What was your most difficult case to decide while on the Supreme Court?” His reply was when he had to determine if the states were allowed to create their own terms for their representatives. The lecture was very interesting hearing his views about a wide variety of issues. The only negative part of the event was that the lecture was only an hour long and I had to return back to work right after it.

Brooke Koester