Some Justices Are Blind to the Supreme Court's Web Site

Some Justices Are Blind to the Supreme Court’s Web Site

By LAURIE ASSEO

March 26, 2000 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court plans to open its own Web site sometime soon, but don’t expect Justice David H. Souter to go online to check it out.

“I am a computer illiterate,” Souter cheerfully told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee as he and Justice Clarence Thomas presented the court’s proposed budget for fiscal 2001 earlier this month.

“Everybody around me is using computers,” Souter continued. “I get away with it simply because my clerks” and others at the court do use computers to get the work done.

Thomas said the court plans to open its own Web site sometime in the near future and is moving forward with computerizing its internal work.

“Our job is rather portable with computers,” Thomas said. “We’re able to work anyplace in the world.”

Souter is known around the court as an ascetic type who typically lunches on yogurt and an apple. Four years ago, he told the subcommittee that the day a television camera comes into the Supreme Court chamber, “it’s going to roll over my dead body.”

He told panel members that he is not the only person at the court who isn’t looking forward to a proposed major renovation of the Supreme Court building.

The renovation, intended to improve wiring, security and other basic features, is expected to begin in the next several years at an estimated cost of $100 million--a figure subcommittee chairman Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said has “raised a lot of eyebrows.”

Souter said, “Everybody in the Supreme Court would like to postpone the whole thing until he retires. We look upon the whole thing with a certain degree of horror.”

Subcommittee members asked Souter and Thomas about the court’s record of hiring minority law clerks. The justices have been criticized in recent years by civil rights groups and some members of Congress who contend that too few minorities have been chosen for the plum jobs.

Each justice hires three or four recent law school graduates to help screen new cases and research and draft opinions. The one-year jobs often lead to high-paying posts in law firms or law schools.

Among the 35 law clerks currently working for the nine justices are five minority clerks--two blacks and three Asian-Americans. In previous years, there generally have been no more than three minority clerks.

“There’s no question that the subject is on the minds of those who are pushing people in our direction,” Souter said.

Thomas added, “There’s certainly been heightened awareness of this.”

Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) said, “As long as I serve on the committee, it’s not going to go away.”