HLS Professor Richard Parker once remarked that the place where the Supreme Court really went wrong was in the construction of the Court building, commissioned by Chief Justice (and former President) Taft, and built as a gigantic marble temple to the nine who occupy it. Its completion in 1935 was followed quickly by the advent of the modern Court and its often-elitist perspectives on its role in our democracy.

Certainly, it's easy to imagine how such a setting could contribute to an unwillingness to practice judicial restraint.

Is it possible that the same thing may be happening to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court? A couple of months ago, Chip Ford of Citizens for Limited Taxation bestowed the tag "The New Versailles" on their extravagant, $150 million renovation of the Old Suffolk County Courthouse, featuring lavish marble-and-mahogany finishings.

According to yesterday's Boston Globe, state trial court judges are already beginning to feel the arrogance of the newly-exalted SJC:

In renovating the John Adams Courthouse in Pemberton Square, the SJC eliminated passageways that once provided a physical and symbolic link between the 1894 building and the soon-to-be-reopened Suffolk Superior Courthouse next door.

In an unusual display of discord, some Superior Court judges and officials are denouncing the severing of the two buildings. And some see it as a deliberate effort by the SJC to cut itself off from more lowly courts and from the public...

Symbolism aside, several Superior Court officials said the separation makes it harder for trial court employees and lawyers to use the Social Law Library — the nation's oldest law library and one of Boston's oldest civic and cultural organizations — which is housed on the fourth and fifth floors of the Adams Courthouse.

If the buildings were still linked, critics say, Superior Court law clerks who needed to do legal research could simply use the passageways that used to connect the buildings on the basement, first, second, and third levels. Now they'll have to leave the high-rise, walk about 50 yards, and then re-enter the Adams Courthouse. (Lawyers who want to dash to the library during a break between Superior Court proceedings will also have to pass through metal detectors, because they are not state employees.)

If there's a betting market in which court will continue to lead the nation in appalling activist decisions, your money should be right here. Oh, wait — those are your hard-earned tax dollars.

Update: The crediting of Professor Parker as the source for these remarks has been confirmed, so I have deleted the following text: "One of my professors here at HLS, possibly"