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Forbes.com asked the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), which surveys hundreds of defense attorneys and corporate executives every year for its report on litigation abuse on "Judicial Hellholes," to list the places identified by the largest number of survey respondents as the worst possible places to be a defendant in particular types of lawsuits.

Even yesterday, he repeated his opposition to allowing cameras at the court's oral arguments, because he said the clips shown by the media would not accurately represent what happened there. "Why should I participate in the mis-education of the American people?" he replied to his student questioner.

In the Web era, is the best use of the Times' column inches the traditional day-after-oral-arguments story and the day-after-decisions dispatches? Is there a more creative way to report on the court? Should Liptak cover the court with more argument and greater point of view, the way he covers the law in his current Sidebar column?

U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell on Friday ruled that the 2006 federal law requiring state sex offenders to register with law-enforcement officials when they move across state lines was largely a local issue.

"The Adam Walsh Act was enacted with a commendable goal -- to protect the public from sex offenders," Presnell wrote. "However, a worthy cause is not enough to transform a state concern [sex-offender registration] into a federal crime."

Presnell's problem with the federal law centered on the "mere unrelated travel in interstate commerce" to link it with local criminal conduct. Such reasoning would subject virtually all criminal activity to federal scrutiny, he wrote.

"Surely, our founding fathers did not contemplate such a broad view of federalism," Presnell wrote.

When Justice David Souter joined the Supreme Court in 1990, the reporters who cover the court greeted him, as we do with all new justices, with a gathering in the court's press room. After an hour or so, as Souter inched his way toward the door, he turned and told us, "This was fun. Let's do it again when I retire."

His wry remark was a sad reminder that we see a lot of the justices when they are nominated and again when they leave the court. But in between, when they are doing the public's business, they drop out of sight -- unless they have a book to sell. In a democracy dependent on an informed public, that's no way for its nine most important judges to operate.

"I am so glad I did not go to Columbia Journalism [School] and I picked the law. I had misgivings about that, but not anymore."