After Inauguration, people will go home. The massive tourist crowds which are expected to swell Washington D.C. to near bursting will dissolve. The politicians and bureaucrats will get back to business. And, after taking Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and Tuesday for the Inauguration, the Supreme Court will be back in session on Wednesday. Then, they will hear cases whose lawyers have worked almost as long as President Elect Barack Obama to be heard. If any of you Inauguration goers have flights which leave on Wednesday afternoon, you should spend the morning at the Supreme Court, since the oral arguments are open to the public.

People need to take the time to listen to these judges, because the nine people on the Supreme Court make decisions which affect a nation. Yes, they are checked by other governmental branches, but they still orchestrate an enormous amount of power. Whether or not you agree with the extent of their power or how they interpret the law, it’s commendable that the Supreme Court’s arguments are open to the public. For only when the general  public is involved (even as observers), do we begin to understand and discuss and care about the issues and the legal system.

I knew very little about the legal system or the Supreme Court until I took Constitutional Law in high school. I didn’t go to law school, nor do I have plans to do so, but that course ended up being my favorite class. For homework each evening, we were assigned one or two Supreme Court cases and then the teacher lectured on them during the following class period. My teacher and the cases opened my eyes to the judicial branch of our federal government in a way that nothing else has before or since. Even these days, I sometimes read recent Supreme Court cases from Cornell law school’s online Supreme Court collection, just for fun. Since moving to Baltimore, I’ve taken advantage of the fact that you can go listen to and watch Supreme Court oral arguments. The judges’ specific questions to lawyers aren’t as moving as a general, charismatic inauguration speech, but the cases’ outcomes do change laws and lives at federal, state, and local levels.

A book which succinctly charts the main effects of certain Supreme Court rulings is The Supremes’ Greatest Hits. Its subtitle is “The 34 Supreme Court Cases Which Most Directly Affect Your Life,” and the book does well the necessary job of outlining Supreme Court cases for a lay audience. By focusing on the judges’ personalities and politics, Jeffrey Toobin’s book The Nine has also been successful in attracting an audience who may not usually be interested in the Supreme Court. And by having its oral cases open to the public, the Supreme Court also tries to attract a lay audience, though I imagine less people know about this opportunity than other Washington DC attractions, since the court doesn’t hear cases during the main tourist months.

If you are in Washington DC in the tourist off-season, and you do plan to listen to the oral arguments, arrive at the court very early, as they only allow a limited number of people inside. Last year my parents and I got in line at 7:30, hoping to listen to the ten o’clock and eleven o’clock arguments. We didn’t make it for the ten o’clock criminal case but we did make it inside for the eleven o’clock business case. If you actually want to know what the lawyers and judges are talking about, read the merit briefs–the respondents’ and petitioners’ cases–which are provided on the Supreme Court’s website. And if you can’t make it the day after Inauguration, that’s okay, because the Supreme Court hears oral arguments one to three days a week from October to April, year in year out. Maybe a while after this current ruckus, you’ll have a chance to go and hear this quiet, intelligent, and intense part of history being made.

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My family has a strong history of being involved in politics. My late grandfather was a journalist and wrote a series of newspaper articles with an obvious political agenda, like the need for conservation. For several years my grandmother worked for the Democratic Party at the North Dakota legislature, and since starting her own small business has drafted bills affecting her company and convinced legislators to pass them. I remember listening, wide-eyed and admiring, to her revel in a particularly sweet victory. She had swung a close vote in the House to her favor by going to the restaurant where the majority party (Republicans) met after-hours and forced them to talk to her about her bill before they could use the restrooms. It was particularly sweet because in passing her bill, she had thwarted a political nemesis as well. I remember talking to my father during the Dole/Clinton election and urging him to vote for Clinton, probably because my mother had off and on expressed disdain for Republicans. He listened to me, but refused to tell me who he voted for on principle, which was my first introduction to the importance of voter confidentiality. (I remember thinking, “What, he won’t tell me? I can’t do anything illegal with that information – I’m eight.”) When I was a bit older my mother would take me to political movies and rallies, like a gun-control rally at the Capitol.

Until I sat down to write this, I did not realize how much politics was a part of my childhood. I am sure my parents, especially my mother, had talks with me about politics, though I cannot remember particular conversations that created my liberal bias. Certainly I am liberal because my mother is. I think my father felt that political choices should be discussed as my sister and I grew older. It always seemed natural to think “liberal” things throughout my growing up, so my mother’s influence was probably conveyed to me not through any one conversation, but through many small comments.

My mother has a somewhat traditional take on politics: she is defined by a Democratic lean, though it is possible that a Republican could sway her if the conservatives made a strong case. As far as I can tell, she has a respect for other, non-Democratic liberals (much less so for conservatives, whom she rightly regards as supporting policies opposite to her values), but she doesn’t seem to be swayed into voting for third parties. She tends to trust that an idea in the Democratic platform will be sound, while Republicans have to prove that their ideas are better. My mother taught me that, above all, politics matters because the government acts out the social values of its members. She is the reason I tend to heavily weigh social issues over economic ones.

My father is a moderate now, but to define his political stance in the past is difficult, as he is somewhat of a moving target. Based upon the comments that both my parents made about him in the past, he was certainly more conservative when he was younger, and less thoughtful than he is now. As I have grown up and become more of his intellectual equal, he has delighted in talking to me about political issues. It seems that our conversations were/are partly a way to teach me about persuasive argument and critical thinking, and partly a way to supplement his ideas with my unique perspective. These conversations were crucial to the development of my thoughts on political debate: I see opposition for opposition’s sake as exhausting and counter-productive. My father taught me to seek understanding and respectful discourse even on passionate issues – which is partly why I am so taken aback when people show a willingness to close their ears and assume the worst about their opponents.

My stepmother and I have never discussed politics. Perhaps this is because throughout my childhood she had to walk the line between parental authority and domestic harmony, and because she knew that to argue with my mother’s opinions via me was a bad plan. My father reports that she is conservative, particularly Republican, but I do not know what that means for her.

Despite all this, I still see myself as a rather independent political being. I cannot explain my political opinions at all in the context of my parents. Take my feminism: like my liberalism, I cannot remember a time before I thought about gender roles and the fact that women clearly seemed to have a disadvantage. I am without a doubt the most radical member of my family on women’s rights, nearly entirely due to my own initiative. Certainly my mother has had feminist values most of her life; part of the reason my parents divorced was a fundamental disagreement about the gender roles and functions each of them played in the household. (This is not to imply that my father does not support a woman’s right to work and so forth, but I think that he is one of those folks who did not realize the extent of the limitations on women until he watched his daughters grow.) But I have since moved far beyond both my parents in the level of exploration and critical consideration of feminist thought.

Another characteristic of mine that seems to be fully self-formed is my commitment to civic engagement. My parents may have planted to seeds of it – voting is good, helping others is good – but I do not recall them discussing, say, the value of volunteering with me before I started doing it. One of the earliest things I did was to volunteer at a nursing home once a week, playing BINGO with the residents. While my parents lavished praise on me and made it clear how much they admired me for doing so, I don’t recall them suggesting that I start it. The impression that my ideas about how to be a good citizen are mine alone is reinforced by looking at my sister, who volunteers, but not at the level that I do. Based on her behavior, she seems to see community involvement as less inherently fun and worthwhile than I do. However, I cannot say what her opinions are on civic engagement, since that’s not something we often talk about.

So how much am I politically like my parents?

The best way to answer that is not by parsing out all the differences and similarities on issues (which I chalk up to personal style more than anything) but in the general ways I think. I have a bias toward liberals, like my mother, but before I vote I carefully consider how well each candidate represents me, as my moderate father would. Like my mother, I think certain issues like education reform and healthcare are incredibly important. But like my father, I think that considering what the role of government should be according to the Constitution is important as well. I think I’ve taken that a step farther, though, by also deeply caring about transparency; rather than the government watchdogs that declare everything is all right if taxes are low and government small, what is most important to me is the quality of the government, not the extent of its activities. Still, that we could agree on the same methods but have different policy stances indicates that there is a large degree of my own personality behind my political choices. And that independence, too, seems like something my parents have given me.

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