Regent Law student Leandra Rayford wrote this first-person account after returning from watching American Center for Law and Justice chief counsel Jay Sekulow argue Pleasant Grove City vs. Summum last week. Sekulow is an adjunct professor at Regent, where Rayford is one of his students. She worked at the ACLJ last summer, and had a piece of the early research that Sekulow relied on. Here is Leandra's story:
Pleasant Grove Oral Arguments at the Supreme Court
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Today I had one of the greatest experiences--if not the greatest-- of my law school career: I went to hear oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States on the case Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. This summer when I was given the opportunity to work at the American Center for Law and Justice and do research on monuments throughout the country, I don't think I really comprehended what preparation for a Supreme Court argument entails. However, even though I stopped working for the ACLJ once school started, I have been enrolled in a class that has been following Dr. Sekulow's preparation for oral arguments.
A couple of weeks ago, our class (about 30 students, I think) gave Dr. Sekulow a moot court session where for two hours we asked him questions about the facts, legal analysis, and hypotheticals. He had previously done a 6 hour moot court with a different group. Having traveled and done moot courts in different areas, he engaged in two more moot court sessions at Regent, where he not only practiced his answers, but also the etiquette of the court: yielding to a justice who is speaking, knowing which justice to address and answer first when multiple are talking at once, asking permission to continue answers, etc.
Yesterday, those of us in the class (plus a few others) went up on a bus to D.C., stayed the night in a hotel a few blocks from the Supreme Court, and then (when our bus failed to show up) walked to the Supreme Court at 5 am to stand in line for tickets to get in and hear the oral arguments. Not only students in the class were there, but also students who clerked (like me) this summer for the ACLJ. For four hours, we endured the biting cold of the fall morning and stood outside in line, as bundled up as possible. Then... they started letting us in, but a horrible thing happened-- not everyone in our class got in to the building. Apparently there more more seats reserved than anticipated, and also some people who were connected to Regent in some way (such as graduates or spouses) showed up and were before students in line. Also, there were a few people not connected to the school interspersed with the students.
I was looking back at some of my friends wondering what they were going to do, and when I was seated in the courtroom (and this says a lot for his character to me), Dr. Sekulow asked if all the students got in, because he was actually thinking about his students and not just his argument. When I responded "no, sir" he was upset and tried to figure out what happened; the simple fact was that there were too many people!
At 10 am I was slightly puzzled that the justices had not yet appeared. I was told the Supreme Court was very prompt, so I looked back and forth at the two large courthouse clocks (the room is amazing, by the way, with large friezes around the room of historical law givers and a ceiling that reminded me of Rome). At 10:02, the police officers indicated that we should rise just as the Chief Justice walked into the courthouse. It was time for the fun to begin. :)
In all honestly, I'm not quite sure what happened for the first 7 minutes or so. I'm pretty sure that an opinion was read by the Court for a case, but I don't know what the case was about and I was somewhat shaking-- both from trying to get warm and nerves. Then, another really cool thing happened: we got to see people being admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court. After a few others, Dr. Sekulow made a motion that the court accept Regent professors Darius Davenport, Scott Pryor, and Lynn Kohm into the bar, as well as others. Then, all those admitted were sworn in.
Finally, Chief Justice Roberts called the case, and Dr. Sekulow began his argument. He got through about 44 seconds before any questions started from the court, and I was surprised at how long he had to answer questions about the Establishment Clause (an estimated 5 minutes). He also quoted pages of text, which I was amazed at--once again-- that he could do just off the top of his head. What was almost comical was to hear how fast he talked in trying to get his point across, only to have the pace of the argument slowed substantially by a justice asking a question.
Thinking about it now, I do laugh because he would be on a roll answering a question, and then Justice Ginsburg would cut in with a question that it seemed she would never finish because it took so long to ask. Also, Justice Souter (I think it was him) seemed to ask a ton of questions at one point on government speech, and I was definitely proud of how moot courts had gone at Regent as some of the questions he had were similar to those that came up, which meant I knew Dr. Sekulow had a prepared answer. It seemed that his argument went on for a very long time, and it turns out I was correct; while he had talked about possibly reserving 10 minutes for rebuttal, he only reserved two!!
The next person to present (for Pleasant Grove) did so on behalf of the government. He got through about 12 seconds, I think, before asking a question, and talked noticeably slower than Dr. Sekulow. Though I can't remember the certain phrase he used, he seemed to have a theme to his argument because I remember noticing that he said the exact same sentence multiple times as answers to different questions. I couldn't tell if he was just trying to drive it home, or if he kept saying it because he was trying to justify it in different ways if the justices did not agree.
Finally came the attorney for Summum. She got out a whopping nine seconds of speech before her opening statement was cut off with a question. I honestly don't remember much of her argument because it did not make much sense to me, and apparently I was not alone in that as a justice commented that he did not understand what she was saying. I do remember her saying that she believed a city could only adopt a monument by doing so formally and in writing stipulating such. She also got many hypotheticals; Justice Scalia definitely asked her a ton of questions. The attorney backed herself into a corner and finally conceded that one of his examples would be government speech (although to keep her point, she shouldn't have agreed with him).
In rebuttal, one of the things I noticed was a lack of an example which ran through all of our moot court sessions-- Fred Phelps and his church wanting to put up monuments. However, Dr. Sekulow told us later that he did so on the spur of the moment, choosing instead to use that with a 9/11 monument such as the park has, under the current 10th Circuit ruling, a person would have to also be allowed to put up an Al Qaeda monument.
Overall, hearing the oral arguments was an amazing experience. Then, at a reception at the ACLJ, I met the current mayor of Pleasant Grove City. Suddenly all my work from this summer and even in the class had a face to it; before it was just a city some place in Utah, even though I read the depositions of citizens and the mayor. Meeting the mayor somehow also gave me more of a sense of urgency regarding the case, because, as he said "it's [his] case, and all [he] can do is show up and watch and wait."
So now we all wait... The Supreme Court will release its decision sometime before the end of the term, and that's really all we know. The arguments were phenomenal, the experience was once-in-a-lifetime, and once again I feel blessed to be a part of Regent Law School.
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