Having spent the last two days in museums, we decided to break it up a bit and headed to the Capitol. Here’s a clue for anyone headed to DC to sightsee- as soon as you know when you will be here, call your congressman to see about getting tour tickets for the Capitol.
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| on the steps of the Capitol |
We did call last week but weren't able to get a personalized tour. I don't know how different it would have been, because we did have a pretty good tour.
Once inside, we donned headsets for our guided tour of the building. We’ve both been in this building before, and really only did the tour because it has been so long since we’d been here.
The Rotunda is full of statues. In fact, there are hundreds of statues in the Capitol building, but there are very few ways that the statues can be acquired. Each state is allowed to showcase two statues that represent their state. This statue of Ronald Reagan was donated by California. In order to donate this one, California had to remove the statue that had been there before. There are bits of the Berlin wall incorporated into the base of this statue.
Another way for a statue to end up at the Capitol is for Congress to pay for it themselves. That doesn’t happen very often (its been 140 years since the last one), but they did have this statue of Rosa Parks commissioned. It stands in Statuary Hall. Rosa Parks was the first woman to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
The Capitol Crypt sits directly under the Rotunda and has enough columns to comfortably hold up the heaviness of the Rotunda and Capitol Dome. It’s second purpose was to hold the tomb of George Washington. By the time the building was finished, Washington had been dead for many years and George was already buried at Mount Vernon. His family refused to allow the body to be moved, since George had specified that he wanted to be buried at home.
Congress kept attempting to pressure the family into changing their minds, and pestered them so much that the state of Virginia passed a law making it illegal to move George Washington’s body out of state. That stopped the pestering.
The Supreme Court Building:
Directly across the street from the Capitol, is the Supreme Court. I was hoping that they would be in session, but that won’t happen until October, so we didn’t get to see them in action. The outside is being worked on so instead of seeing the actual columns, we could see a sort of tarp, with the columns painted on it. The building was originally built in the early 1930s with a budget of $10 million. Thanks to the Depression, this is one of the only times a government project has come in under budget.
Great Hall, just outside the courtroom is quite majestic. Although there are no actual tours of the building, there are regularly scheduled lectures given inside the courtroom itself.
No pictures are allowed inside the court, so I took a picture of this diorama that shows the layout. The lecture we listened to was awesome, explaining the room itself- some chairs are for the general public, some are reserved for attorneys who are not presenting, and off to the side are the Press seats. Of course there is no jury box, since no trials are held here.
So, because I found it very interesting, here is a little information about how the Supreme Court works. The justices receive 10,000-15,000 petitions a year. They all have to read all of them. Each one votes on whether he/she thinks it is a case they should hear. If 4 of them think it is, it goes on the docket.
Only specific attorneys are allowed to argue in front of the Supreme Court. To qualify they had to have argued in front of their state Supreme Court for a number of years, and they have to be sponsored by two members of the Supreme Court Bar.
When a case comes in front of the justices, each of the two attorneys who are going to argue the case has 30 minutes to present his side. Within a minute or so they are usually interrupted by one of the Justices. After all, everyone is familiar with the case, and the Justices want to get their questions answered and get whatever clarification they need, in the time they have allotted. 60 minutes later, that case is done, and they move on to the next one. Usually within a few days, the justices discuss the case and vote on what they think the outcome should be. If the vote of the Chief Justice is in the Majority, he decides who will write the Majority Opinion. If not, the most senior Justice decides who will write it.
