Reading Room in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress

The trip’s first few days have been fun and extremely insightful. Though a 5 am wake-up was not exactly the way I had pictured by spring break, it was worth it. After arriving at Reagan National we headed straight to the “luxurious Comfort Inn – Ballston”, as Professor Kobylka, and all of us on the trip, like to refer to it. From there we headed to the Library of Congress Madison building to get our reader cards and then took a self-guided tour of the Jefferson building. It was honestly stunning, seeing the artwork of the dome, and the immensity of the building was astonishing. We got to look through the alcoves where I found a book dating back to 1841. After exploring the Jefferson reading room we headed down the street to my favorite restaurant of the trip “We the Pizza”. After splitting some Hawaiian and mushroom pizzas and the handcrafted sodas they offer, we all returned to the hotel to prepare for our research and rest. The next morning was our official first day of research in the Madison Reading Room. We headed in for our orientation and got straight to work.

I decided to start with Justice Blackmun’s papers, as both our librarian Bruce and Professor Kobylka had explained that his papers are the most complete and helpful. I got my first request slip and patiently awaited my first set of boxes. At first, I was concerned about being able to go through so many boxes and be able to grasp all the important information. What I did not entirely account for is how difficult it actually is to read Justice Blackmun’s handwriting. It is not only tiny but also abbreviated to an almost incomprehensible extent. I have, however, started to get the hang of it. As it turns out, Justice Blackmun liked to abbreviate the as “t”, and secular as “sclr”. It takes a whole lot of reading and a good magnifying glass to be able to understand what Justice Blackmun wrote.

Opening the boxes and seeing all the papers, bench memos, memorandums to the Conference, notes from Clerks, and oral arguments notes were for a lack of a better term awesome. People, including myself, have always wondered how Justices make decisions and how they write their opinions. These boxes were front-row seats. We were, in the words of Aaron Burr, “in the room where it happens”.