DC is the capital of the US. This means that DC area residents have easy access to a lot of neat things. One of them is sitting in on Supreme Court ^[1] cases. For those of you who don’t know, members of the public are allowed to sit in on supreme court oral arguments ^[2].

I tried to do this yesterday morning to hear the oral arguments in the case of MGM v. Grokster ^[3], which deals with whether software or harware manufacturers can be held liable for (potentially) illegal actions on part of their users. This was a pretty big case, and a large crowd turned out in hopes of seeing the arguments. So large that only a small fraction of the waiting crowd got to attend, while the rest of us (myself included) were left standin outside. However, I did take some pictures of the goings-on outside the building, and posted them up on flickr ^[4].

If you’re interested, you can read more about the morning here ^[5]. I’m still hoping to see the supreme court in person, and I’ll be trying again next month. Taking a half-day off work is worth it to see democracy in action.