Tuttle in the Balance by Jay Wexler

Author:Jay Wexler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: American Bar Association
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning, Ed takes his seat on the bench between Cornelius and Epps and prepares for the beginning of the dreaded argument about pornography. This is the first case of the term that the public and the media are paying any real attention to, and the plaza in front of the court is packed with protestors and sign-carriers of all kinds. One poster has the cover of the Sexy Slut issue reproduced on it twenty times; at forty-two times twenty, that’s 840 penises being paraded around the front of the nation’s highest tribunal. Not to be outdone, some of the people on the other side—the “let pornography be free” crowd—have come dressed up as giant penises and have been doing cartwheels and dancing to swing music next to the fountain on the east side of the plaza. It’s exactly the kind of constitutional circus that makes Ed cringe, although if this were a reality show and he had to vote for one of the groups to move on to the next round, Ed pretty much knows that he would vote for the dancing Johnsons. At least they have a sense of humor.

The solicitor general for the state of Texas is the first to argue, and the liberals unshockingly give her a hard time. “What’s wrong with the test we’ve been applying for the past forty years?” Epps asks. “How can you say that pornography isn’t expressive?” demands Stephenson. “What’s the alternative?” wonders Leibowitz. Sharon Cox answers the questions without hesitation—the test is too strict, the expression is dangerous, the alternative is to let the states do what they want. The conservatives are mostly silent, once in a while even peeping up to support Cox’s position, to make clear they agree that hardcore porn should not be protected. The Chief asks about the pornography-violence link; she poses her comments in the form of a question, but it’s clear she’s just giving the lawyer the green light to wax eloquent on the dangers of too much smut in the public square. Wax she does, and Garabelli practically gets out of his seat to applaud her efforts.

Ed stays silent for the entire argument. Among other things, he doesn’t want to give the reporters anything to talk and write and blog about. They know that the case will likely turn on his vote, so everything he says will be dissected endlessly, put through the prognostication mill, misconstrued. Instead of asking questions, he tries to sketch the lawyer’s profile on the back of the petitioner’s brief. The perspective is difficult because Cox is at an angle and constantly turning her head to answer a different justice’s question, but by the end of her twenty-eight-minute argument (she’s reserved two minutes for rebuttal), and with the help of a good deal of erasing and redrawing and closing of one eye and then the other to get better focus, he thinks he’s got something worth showing his sketch drawing class when it meets next Sunday afternoon at the Adult Education Center in Foggy Bottom.

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