Can you imagine the Supreme Court justices at a backyard barbecue? |
Working on that project involved months of looking at hundreds of faces of justices going back to 1867. It got me thinking a lot about how we picture our institutions or think about the people within them. |
The portrait of the justices is important, but if you're like me, when you imagine the court the first image that comes to mind is probably this one: |
 | | Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times |
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The Supreme Court Building — a solid, serious, stone building emblazoned with the motto: Equal Justice Under Law. |
In fact, right as we were wrapping up our work on the justice portraits, there was a breaking story on the New York Times home page that looked like this: |
The reason I think of the building when I think of the court is probably because that's almost always how we see the court represented. There are variations, naturally: |
The angle, the framing, the color of the sky may signal something about the mood of the story — or its themes: |
But often it's just the most convenient stand-in for the subject. Here is a selection of recent Supreme Court stories from major news websites: |
This pattern is totally understandable. When people refer to the court, the word "institution" is often not too far behind. Aside from those carefully managed still portraits, the general public sees the justices the most at their confirmation hearings before they are even sworn in, and then perhaps in the front rows at the State of the Union, politely refraining from applause. For vital figures of the federal government, the justices themselves are far less visible than their counterparts in the other two branches. |
A press pool follows the president, and no one would blink an eye at seeing Mr. Biden's photograph standing in for his administration. This was at the top of the home page the same day as the breaking news court photo from above: |
Reporters and photographers roam the halls of Congress, and there's no shortage of snapshots of its members. In contrast, cameras are banned inside the Supreme Court while it is in session. Photographers only get two minutes to shoot the official group portrait. |
I may know the names and faces of the justices, but they have made themselves very hard to see. |
When I was reporting the portraits article, I read "The Brethren," Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's 1979 book about the court. This line in the introduction stuck with me: "No American institution has so completely controlled the way it is viewed by the public." And a lot of that carefully cultivated image is reflected in how we see the building. |
Buildings don't decide the cases that profoundly shape American life, though. The nine people who work inside the building do. The group portrait, taken only when a new justice is added to the court, is one of the rare times we actually see the nine together. |
In the hours I spent looking at these faces of the justices over time — watching them come into the frame, cycle through the chairs, grow older and more hunched, and exit stage left — I certainly came to more clearly see the people inside the building. |
But all that time with their faces made it no easier for me right now to imagine what the justices look like actually doing their work, on the bench or in their chambers, let alone outside of their black robes — say at a neighbor's backyard barbecue or in a grocery store aisle looking for hamburger buns. |
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