Unlike the secret meeting to select cases, the court's next step is quite public. Oral arguments occur in the Supreme Court's stately, burgundy draped, gold-trimmed courtroom before a first-come, first-seated public audience. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, starting in October, the justices listen to lawyers present each side of two or three cases a day. In the 1980s, when the court accepted more cases, the justices heard arguments in four cases a day.

In this courtroom lawyers have 30 minutes each to make their cases before the justices in the tall chairs by the red curtain. Visitors may watch. The frieze depicts Hammurabi, Moses, Confucius, Mohammed, Napoleon and other "law givers." (Photo by Frank Maroon)

Limited to 30 minutes each, one lawyer from each side makes his or her best arguments. The scene is tense and dramatic as the justices, wearing black robes and sitting in individually sized, black leather chairs, vigorously challenge the lawyers, sometimes consuming large parts of their time allotments.

Even experienced appellate advocates at times become flustered or freeze as they stand at the lectern below the long bench. Still, a lawyer's appearance before the highest court can be the highlight of a career. Lawyers have been known to frame and hang the white quill pens they receive as souvenirs.

"You don't have to be Clarence Darrow ... to successfully argue a case before us," Rehnquist said in a speech last May. "But you do have to be prepared....And you must expect hypothetical questions posing slightly different factual situations from yours and be prepared to answer them."

When the justices pose different hypothetical situations, they are not necessarily trying to divert the lawyer. They are looking at ways their decision might be applied in the future. The justices also may use the occasion to influence other justices, bolstering one side and undermining the other.

During arguments about a Michigan law that led police to confiscate a car in which a man had been caught having sex with a prostitute, one question was how an innocent co-owner of property – the man's wife, in this case – could protect her interest in the property.

When assistant solicitor general Richard Seamon rose to argue as a "friend of the court" in favor of Michigan and its forfeiture law, the justices pressed him on his contention that the wife could have better protected her interest as co-owner of the car.

"What was she supposed to do?" Justice David H. Souter asked, clearly sympathetic to the plight of the twice-burned wife.

Seamon said the wife "can make out the defense [as an innocent owner] by showing that she took all reasonable steps to prevent it."

"You're not taking the position that she was supposed to call the police and say, you better watch out for such-and-such a car because my husband is engaging in illegal acts in it?" Souter asked.

Seamon reluctantly acknowledged that the federal government believed that a co-owner should report illegal activity involving the property, even if a wife must snitch on her husband.

"So it's the position of the solicitor general's office that wives should call the police when their husbands are using prostitutes?" Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked.

The laughter in the courtroom, which appeared to be coming from the justices' clerks, prompted Kennedy to add, "Don't let the laughter of clerks who have never even argued a case in a municipal court deter you from your answer."

Eventually, the confiscation was upheld 5-4, with Souter and Kennedy among the dissenters.

While the give-and-take usually is dominated by arcane legal references, occasionally a case inspires the justices to use more common vernacular.

When they reviewed privacy issues surrounding a school district requirement that student athletes submit urine samples for drug testing, locker room life was topic A. Rehnquist referred to "guys walking around naked," and Breyer said providing a urine sample might not be so intrusive since urination is a fact of life.

The lawyer representing a student who had protested the testing conceded that everyone indeed urinates. Then, in a break from decorum, the lawyer, facing tough questioning, blurted, "In fact, I might do so here." The school district won, 6-3.

For all their attendant drama, oral arguments are only one part of the decision-making process. There also are written briefs submitted by each side – the views of the solicitor general, who is the federal government's top lawyer before the court, and other amicus curiae, or "friends of the court."

Also, the justices review previous cases on a subject, prepare their own interpretations of the law or constitutional provision and sometimes, though rarely, turn to outside experts on the issue.

For example, one of the most controversial elements of the court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), striking down the "separate but equal" doctrine long used to justify school segregation, was Chief Justice Earl Warren's reference to sociological and psychological studies. The studies concluded that segregated schools stigmatized children.