Step Away From the Courthouse Doors

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — In a decision ripe with symbolism about access to justice in the age of terror, the Supreme Court announced on Monday that visitors to its courthouse will no longer be allowed to enter through the front door.

And it is not just any front door. For decades, people with cases before the court, their lawyers and those who just came to see the arguments have climbed the grand steps arrayed in front of the courthouse’s marble columns, passed under the inscribed words “Equal Justice Under the Law” and walked through a passage flanked by two six-ton bronze doors that show historic scenes in the development of the law.

Starting Tuesday, visitors will be directed instead to ground-level side entrances under the stairs that will lead them to what an announcement from the court called “a secure, reinforced area to screen for weapons, explosives, and chemical and biological hazards.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued an unusual statement, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, expressing regret about the court’s decision.

“Writers and artists regularly use the steps to represent the ideal that anyone in this country may obtain meaningful justice through application to this court,” Justice Breyer wrote. “And the steps appear in countless photographs commemorating famous arguments or other moments of historical importance.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04doors.html?th&emc=th

[ensho]

1. the neo con Justices are full of fear over what they did to make the

2000 coup d'etat

making corps. the same as people

on and on

I hope their fear makes them sick

so they won't let anyone come in the front door, our front door. its our supreme court, not theirs.

punks

[Lint Head]

2. The nation is now a Land of Fear thanks to the Bush cabal.

We must fear a terrorist around every corner. We must fear our rights being taken away. We must fear losing everything we own and love.
We must fear death. If we do not fear these things the mega corporations and so-called benevolent religions cannot make a profit.
Of course the so-called benevolent religions only take donations. Otherwise they would lose their tax exempt status.