CSMonitor Piece Now Online

My cover story for this week’s Christian Science Monitor is now online:

They are fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, opera lovers and salsa dancers, long-winded pedants and quick-witted conversationalists, cancer survivors and nonagenarian swimmers, West Coasters and East Coasters, Winnebago drivers and airplane pilots. Aside from being nine of the most powerful men and women in the United States, the Supreme Court justices are also a lot like We the People.

But when we talk about the court looking like America, we also mean things such as the justices’ religions, races, genders, and sexual orientations. We mark our progress as a society by the diversity of these traits on the court. And President Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan makes plain how far we’ve come, and for some, how much further we have to go.

Read the rest here.

MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY!

Monday’s going to be a doozy.  Last day of the term.  Stevens’s last day ever.  Decisions on Guns and God (Gays was decided yesterday), as well as a bit of man v. machine and what may be the financial industry’s own Citizens United.

But that’s not all!

About two hours after the Court lets out for its summer recess, the Senate starts its preseason tryouts with Elena Kagan.

I plan on being in the Courtroom and the hearing room.  And my liveblogging the latter will hopefully be made more colorful by my sleepless Sunday night on the Supreme Court Side Walk.

That’s right: I will be conducting a my own final F1@1F campout for the term.  I suspect it will be a fun one, as the Guns and God oral arguments had the earliest and most enthusiastic lines of the term – and Monday’s certainty of those decisions and the drastically warmer weather (plus the prospect of a stately nonagenarian screaming, “I’m Outta Here!” to a captive audience, tossing reams of paper into the air in a sign of aged defiance) point to a big turnout.

I’d love to see some F1@1F readers out there, too.  If you’re planning on coming to the sidewalk, please do let me know.