Moving the supremes to the heartland: the case for Omaha.

• Author: Farber, Daniel A.

Justice Scalia recently proclaimed that the "proudest thing" he has done on the Court was to refuse to recuse himself from a case involving Vice President Cheney, with whom he had recently been duck hunting. (1) Views will no doubt differ as to whether Scalia should have recused himself or whether any of his judicial opinions deserve a higher place in the annals of judicial history than his refusal to step aside. But there is a deeper question: Do we want our Justices to be hobnobbing with the great and powerful? Or to put it another way, how much of the "Beltway mentality" do we want them to absorb?

Of course, Justice Scalia is hardly alone among Justices in his penchant for associating himself with Washington insiders. Justice Fortas's friendship with Lyndon Johnson and Frankfurter's with FDR come immediately to mind. But in a world in which the Court is seen as increasingly political, and in which political life seems increasingly polarized, perhaps we should seek a judiciary with fewer ties to Washington and more with the ordinary lives led by most Americans, who do not go hunting with Vice Presidents (as in Scalia's case) or play poker with Presidents (as in William O. Douglas's). Having the Court in Washington, where the Justices attend high powered cocktail parties and diplomatic receptions, can only serve to make the Court more political.

Relocating the Court far outside the Washington Beltway might help it reconnect to the rest of the country. (2) Omaha, for example. After all, Omaha is good enough for Warren Buffett. He "lives in a house he bought for $35,000, dines on burgers and quotes Mae West." (3) That's just the kind of all-American lifestyle we should want from the highest tribunal established by We the People. And if the city is good enough for the "Oracle of Omaha," it should be good enough for Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer.

A move to Omaha would also provide the opportunity to get the Court out of the marble mausoleum where it now sits. Justice Brandeis considered it an inappropriate building to house a court in a democracy, and the temple-like architecture does seem to send the wrong message.

It may seem odd to separate the head of the judicial branch physically from the executive and legislative branches. But as the Germans have recognized, there is good sense in such a separation: "That the Constitutional Court in Germany is in Karlsruhe, while the capitol is in Berlin, limits the influence of one branch of...