Testifying to US supreme court: what does it look like?

July 20, 2017 9:40 AM

I'm working on a factual comic book project which requires a scene depicting one of our characters testifying to the US Supreme Court in 1940. My problem is, I have no idea what this would have looked like. I've searched online, but can't find anything to help me.

I'm assuming the gowned justices would have been lined up along a single elevated bench at the front of the room, but how was everyone else arranged? A conventional witness box set-up? Or long tables such as we see in televised congressional hearings? The scene will show a real 1940 Supreme Court case which is important to the story, so I want our depiction of the court to be as accurate as possible.

Any help you can offer would be much appreciated. Most helpful of all would pointers to a movie which has shown this accurately or some courtroom sketches I can find online.

posted by Paul Slade to Law & Government (10 answers total)

The Supreme Court is primarily an appellate court. It reviews the decisions of lower courts based on the written record and the arguments of the advocates. It would actually be quite unusual (though not unheard-of) for anyone to be testifying in front of the Supreme Court, so I'd confirm first that testimony was taken (as opposed to a lawyer making an argument).
posted by praemunire at 9:42 AM on July 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Right, direct testimony to SCOTUS almost never happens, because they are ruling based on what's in the record and the written/spoken arguments of the parties.
posted by suelac at 10:24 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

What's the court case, if you don't mind sharing?
posted by cdefgfeadgagfe at 10:30 AM on July 20, 2017

Here's a photo of the interior in 1932, and here are the results of an image search that may be helpful (most appear to not be from that era, but still).
posted by rtha at 10:39 AM on July 20, 2017

That 1932 photo is from when the Supreme Court worked in the Capitol. The Supreme Court Building that we all know today was finished in 1935.
posted by tepidmonkey at 10:51 AM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

(The Supreme Court does have what's known as "original jurisdiction," i.e., they can hear the case when it begins, before a lower court does, in a handful of types of cases, but those are rare. I don't know how often such cases involve taking testimony as opposed to making rulings of law based on factual stipulations by the parties--lawyers understand that fact-finding is, in practice, not how the Court is going to spend its time.)
posted by praemunire at 11:37 AM on July 20, 2017

Almost every original jurisdiction case that would require testimony is sent to a "special master" -- an attorney appointed by the Court to hear the evidence and then make a recommendation on how the case should be resolved.

The Supreme Court then decides whether it will accept or reject the recommendation. So even in that situation, the Court itself doesn't hear the testimony directly, and it probably won't happen in the Court's big fancy courtroom, either.
posted by Zonker at 12:13 PM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

(An example is New Jersey v New York, 523 US 767 (1998). The opinion is available here.)
posted by Zonker at 12:16 PM on July 20, 2017

It probably looked very much like this artist's rendition of a case in 2015. As noted above, it's a very rare thing for anyone but attorneys to speak before the court.
posted by SemiSalt at 12:44 PM on July 20, 2017

Response by poster: I'd sooner not identify the case for the moment, as the comics project I mentioned is still in its very early stages. Thanks to everyone for all the useful images and comments, though.

As praemunire suggests, I think I'd better go back and check my facts on this again. It's possible that I wrongly concluded this guy's testimony came at the Supreme Court hearing, when in fact he gave it at an earlier stage of the case's progress up through the courts system. If so, I'll have to give that particular page a bit of a re-think!
posted by Paul Slade at 3:27 PM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]