The '99 Term saw cases ranging from grandparents' rights to visit their grandchildren to prayer before football games. The constitutionality of a partial-birth abortion ban was challenged, as was the Miranda warning. (See related story.) The FDA was barred from regulating tobacco as a drug, and Congress was barred from trying to sanction rape as affecting interstate commerce. And the right of strippers to go on free expressing was rejected.

I spent the term courtside in the tiny Supreme Court press gallery (a journalist's dream of hard benches and obstructed views). As I saw most of the cases being argued, and decisions being read, I can assert with some confidence that the soundtrack for this past term includes some songs the public never hears. Otherwise you too might have the chance to fully appreciate the tone and cadence of a Justice Scalia "Trademark Sarcastic Rejoinder." Or the sound of "New Hampshire in Winter" under Justice Souter's voice when his dander gets up.

Reporting on this term's happenings for Slate, the online news magazine owned by Microsoft and edited by Michael Kinsley, I have become certain that these tones and hiccups, the facial expressions and hand gestures, are as important to understanding the Court's jurisprudence as is the closest textual reading of the majority holding. These human moments—Justice Stevens's compassion for a grandparent, or Justice Scalia's visceral horror at abortion—animate the Court's formal opinions as no footnote or string citation can.

While print reporting of Supreme Court happenings has traditionally been one of the bright lights of journalism, the reverence with which the High Court is treated by the media has always seemed somewhat excessive. I think the reverence does violence to the role of the press as democracy's watchdog.

The courts in general, and the United States Supreme Court in particular, have had a rather prickly relationship with the press. The same Court that has climbed the highest ramparts to defend the First Amendment hasn't always welcomed the Fourth Estate with open arms. The Court has never had an easy time justifying why, for instance, television cameras cannot cover oral argument. Nor is it easy to get a plausible justification for the Court's rule against spectators taking notes in the courtroom. Are the justices worried about renegade caricaturists, or being attacked by a malcontent with a Bic felt-tip?

Reporters work under seemingly arbitrary constraints on their dress (absurdly archaic); their seating (absurdly hierarchical); their recording devices (not-on-your-life, mister); and their access to the justices (yeah, right). Once, on entering the courtroom, I had to abandon my copy of Kakfa's The Trial at the security checkpoint. Try explaining the concept of irony to the U.S. Marshal Service.

A congressman or president imposing such constraints would be denounced as a fascist. Indeed, a president who sought to immunize himself in this way from media scrutiny would be chased even more vigorously by the press. The assumption would be that the secrecy meant there was something to hide. Yet in the Supreme Court these rules are inviolate. Words like "decorum" and "stature" suffice to silence the jesters and jugglers.

The justices resent scrutiny into their personal lives. Indeed, Justice Thomas gave a speech this year in which he castigated the press for reporting—during the tobacco regulation case—on the number of justices who smoked. Thomas deemed the attention to such personal detail "frivolous."

What is interesting about the justices' anxiety about media coverage that is "frivolous," personal, or irreverent is that it suggests that the Court has bought into its own mythology. That is to say, it's bought into the notion that these nine individuals are not merely brilliant jurists, but oracular seers who are interchangeable, faceless, inspired diviners of truth. Why is it so unthinkable that a justice's decision to smoke might inform her opinions? It is a far cry from the Framers' wish that the justices be apolitical, to the current state of affairs in which they are somehow a-human. Why must we believe that a justice's ideas are less worthy when they are informed by his religion or experience? Such willful blindness to the personal beliefs of the justices does nothing to preserve "decorum."

We live in a land in which a senator is not even a serious candidate until she has survived a good media thrashing. While the extent of the savagery in the media is excessive, can anyone really argue that it's good for democracy when the press stops holding our leaders' feet to the fire?

Slate has a wonderfully democratic message board system called The Fray, which I have ruefully dubbed The Flay insofar as some of the daily postings about my work have left me without any skin on key parts of my body. Still, I remain a zealous proponent of the interactive nature of the Internet, as compared to conventional print reporting. I believe the media ought to engage less in a monologue with reporters trumpeting to the masses the day's events at the High Court, and more in a dialogue with readers discussing back and forth the issues in each case. How often do you read a letter to the editor about an oral argument piece in a major paper?

I am more and more persuaded by my work at Slate that the public is interested, informed, and passionate about the doings of the High Court. They want to understand the legal issues and debate the policy questions. They want to participate.

So, it was to my great surprise that any number of daily postings about my Court coverage in Slate were critical, not of my opinions, which are usually wrong, but of this project of humanizing the Brethren and Sister-en on the Bench. "Justice Breyer is an important and brilliant legal thinker," a typical posting will say. "How dare the author subject him to ridicule by comparing his hand gestures on the High Bench to Madonna 'vogue-ing?'" It is difficult to imagine a similar comment being leveled at a reporter parodying the President (who, whatever his flaws may be, is an equally important and brilliant thinker). It is almost a misdemeanor for a comedian to skip the cigar joke these days. One can only conclude that the public, like the press and the Court itself, have come to believe that the justices are "different."

But how are they different? It would seem to me that what makes them different, namely political appointments and lifetime tenure, would warrant more personal scrutiny than the other two branches of government. We do not engage in such scrutiny because, I suspect, we believe not only that the Court is a "different" branch of government, but also that it occupies a quasi-religious role in our national consciousness.

This reverence is played out at many levels, including the architectural decision to model the Court after a Greek temple (the other two branches of government operate out of a public meeting place and a pretty white "house"). In this Information Age, I cannot fathom why the Court remains swathed in unparalleled secrecy, unless it is due to a bizarre confluence of three forces. Somehow, the authority of the Court, acquiescence by the press, and the public's need for a secular church have kept the Supreme Court insulated from the tough questions, cruel parodies, and lively interviews that make the media such a vital player in our democracy. I come to my task at Slate, neither to praise the justices, nor to bury them. A year of sportswriting about them has given me a far deeper sense of admiration and reverence for them than any written opinion ever could.

Dahlia Lithwick '96 covers the Supreme Court for Slate.