'Law & Order,' this is not

A silver-haired professor walked into the four-floor elevator at the University of Iowa Boyd Law Building on Tuesday. “Are you going to five?” he asked a colleague, who smiled.

“I'm going to six,” he continued, looking at the numbers above the door. “By popular vote.”

Elitist? OK, a little. But if you've devoted your life to studying our government's third branch, you could be excused for being cranky these days.

Iowans who've never set foot inside a courtroom still cry “activist” over the Supreme Court's 2009 ruling against Iowa's same-sex marriage ban. Just down I-80 at the Statehouse, social conservatives are poised to file articles of impeachment for those high-court justices who weren't fired by voters last November.

For all the attention, Levitt Auditorium was characteristically empty Tuesday when the Court of Appeals convened to hear oral arguments in cases covering everything from divorce to foreclosure to breach of contract. It's something the court does every few years as a sort of educational tour - a way to make it easier for Iowans to watch them work. But only a couple dozen students, a few attorneys and I showed up that afternoon to see how the sausage is made.

Court in real life is rarely the stuff of “Law & Order.” It's conservatively dressed professionals arguing over minutiae, splitting hairs long after most of us would just give up and say: “Oh, whatever - just call me when you've got it figured out.”

Which is how we tend to treat the entire judicial branch, that is unless we're playing Monday morning quarterback.

It reminded me of something Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady said about the courts in his State of the Judiciary address last January - that they serve the people by serving the rule of law.

Literally, because although the courts are open to the public, few Iowans ever bother to sit and watch them working.

“People are busy,” a law clerk explained when I asked why she thought that was true.

Every once in a while, folks come out, the woman said - like they did two years ago for Varnum v. Brien. But I guess you can't blame people for not paying attention to the bulk of the court's work.

“It gets so technical,” a staff attorney said.

Court convenes at the law school again today. The staffers thought maybe people would show if I mentioned that in the column. “We've got a murder case,” one said, hopefully. So come on down and learn something.

But if it's drama you're looking for, you're probably better off driving a little farther down I-80, to the Statehouse.

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