I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week, I'm joined by my colleague Jason Sneed. Welcome to SCOTUS 101.

It's great to be here for my rookie episode. We'll go easy on you. Well, first let's hit

some of the SCOTUS headlines. On Monday of this week, while the remaining parts of the federal

government that aren't shut down took a snow day, the Supreme Court met for oral arguments.

Rain or shine, the justices are ready to proceed. I came across a funny story from the

Rehnquist days.

Apparently in the mid-90s, D.C. got 21 inches of snow, and the chief refused to cancel oral arguments.

He was from Wisconsin, after all. And so Chief Justice Rehnquist had Jeeps sent out to pick up all of the justices.

But Justice Souter, a New Englander, refused any help and insisted on

driving himself to the court. He apparently got stuck in a snowbank and had to be rescued by the

Supreme Court police. And of the nine members of the court, he was the only one who was late for

argument that day. Oh, man. Well, speaking of shutdowns, our current partial government shutdown is the longest in history,

day 27 as we're sitting here in the studio, and there is no end in sight. At least insofar as the

federal judiciary has been concerned, though, there's been a little bit of a bright spot.

For another week, they've been able to find a way to keep the lights on and keep everybody paid for coming to work.

But there's always an end, and now it appears that January the 25th, the courts will finally run out of extra money and won't be able to pinch pennies anymore.

And so at that point, we're looking at potential furloughs for judicial employees and, of course, the requirement

that some people show up to work without pay because the courts have to stay open, which actually

had me thinking, since we are a think tank, maybe we should try to come up with some creative

alternative revenue sources for the federal courts.

Yeah, maybe it could be take a selfie with a justice outside of the courtroom, of course, since cameras and phones aren't allowed inside. You know, I have to admit I'd stop at that selfie booth, especially if it had props, maybe some old English wigs, some gavels, that sort of a thing. You know, one other thing that they could do is they could just start selling tickets like it's a ball game, right? Or maybe just some concessions. I don't know. Yeah. But what would they do about scalpers? That's going to be a ripe question, I'm sure. They could also, they could have some charity events, perhaps brews with Brett, rum with Ruth, or maybe even grog with Gorsuch?

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