Prof. Randy Barnett Joins Erich Prince to Discuss “Con Law”

“You can’t take politics out of the judicial process because judges are human.”

Randy Barnett is the Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and serves as the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center. An expert in constitutional law, Barnett has written several books on the subject, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty and Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People. Barnett appeared before the Supreme Court in the case Gonzales v. Raich, which challenged Congress’ authority to criminalize the use of homegrown marijuana in states that allowed its use for medicinal purposes. Today, Barnett joins Merion West and Erich Prince to discuss his experience arguing a case before the Supreme Court as well as new challenges that the Court faces today.

Professor Barnett, thank you for joining us today. To get started, what are some of the main differences between standing before a normal court, as opposed to being before the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States?

First off, there are nine of them, which differs from the three you get in the Court of Appeals and the one you face in District Court. You have nine potential people asking you questions which you need to satisfy. You are doing so with several hundred people standing behind you, while there is a jury box to your left recording what you are saying. Also behind them, you have someone drawing you for the artist’s rendering of your argument.

That plus the fact you are standing within inches of your opponent proposing oral arguments, who in my case was sitting to my right, is quite remarkable. You are very close to the justices. In fact, they sit in a semi-circle, and you are in the center of it. In order to speak to the justices, you have to turn to your left or right to face them.