Reading Room in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress

The first few days of the trip have been an absolute whirlwind. After a very early 5 am wake up on Monday morning, the 12 of us and Professor Kobylka all met at the airport to jet off to D.C. I thought I would be exhausted all day, but there was so much to do and see that I hardly had time to be tired. After landing in Reagan National Airport, we went straight to drop our stuff off at the luxurious and comfortable Ballston Comfort Inn, eat a quick lunch, and catch the Metro back into the city for our Library Orientation. With just a slight delay for administrative work, we soon had our official readers cards in hand and were exploring the Library. There are three buildings in the Library of Congress, and though we spent most of the week in the Madison Building, we navigated the underground hallways to make our way to the Jefferson Building on that first day. The Reading Room there (pictured right) was magnificent, and we were allotted free time

to explore the many tomes they held. After we’d had our fill of the Jefferson Building, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at We the Pizza, which had been talked up to us all semester by Professor Kobylka and did not disappoint. The buffalo chicken pizza there just might have been in my top five highlights of the trip. It had already been a long day, and Professor Kobylka assured us we would need all our energy for the week ahead, so we hopped the Metro back to the hotel and prepared for the day ahead.

Tuesday morning was our first real day of research, and after a brief orientation talk from some of the Library’s Manuscript experts, we dove right into the boxes. I’d read past blogs and so I knew that the first day would probably be a bit overwhelming, but I was unprepared for the vast amount of material we would have access to. The rules were fairly simple; four boxes at a time, all from the same Justice, and you could not remove multiple folders or move the boxes off the carts. However, the folders weren’t just small files with a few papers. They were absolute mountains of information, and the first folder I looked at (memos and drafts from Justice Blackmun in Planned Parenthood v Casey) took me about two hours to get through. I was panicking; if one folder took me two hours, how would I get through the dozens I had planned to in just five short days? Luckily, after the first few folders I started learning what was important to pick out or not. The stress was also diminished by what was I’m sure the trip highlight for many of us; a tour of the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning. I had never visited before this trip, and I was awestruck to be in the building. This morning, after about an hour of research, we trekked over to the Court building, and it was surreal. We were split into two groups for a private tour after having about an hour to peruse the public spaces downstairs, where they housed portraits of the justices and many neat artifacts like the Great Chief Justice John Marshall’s chair from when he was on the Court. Nowadays, the chair is only removed from its display for a new Justice’s Tyler McCall Investiture Ceremony. During my time at SMU, my focus in the three Supreme Court focused classes I’ve taken with Professor Kobylka has been on different aspects of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s jurisprudence, and when we were exploring through the displays I got to see several exhibits about her life and experience as the first woman on the Court, which was quite fascinating to me personally. The tour was incredible, and our guide supplied us with Supreme Court fun facts as we toured around the Court’s official library and Great Hall. We even got to each take a turn at the podium where the lawyers stand when they argue before the Justices, and I had not expected it to be so very close; practically spitting distance from Chief Justice John Roberts. I would be shaking in my boots being stared down by all of the Justices if I ever argued a case there. The experience ended with a meeting with the Clerk of the Court in the Nancy Rehnquist Tea Room. It’s hard to believe how much we’ve done in just three days, and we have three days ahead of us still!