Behind the Bench
When I took a tour of the Illinois Supreme Court in early March, I found myself stunned by the amount of history the building contained. That day, my Mock Trial team and I traveled to Springfield for the 2025 Illinois State Bar Association High School Mock Trial Invitational. As a senior who had just joined the team that year, it would be my first and last trip downstate for the competition.
Our tour began in the building’s ceremonial courtroom. Sitting in the center of the room, I was surrounded by murals on each and every side of me. As our tour guide explained, the murals were commissioned in the early 1900s to be painted by Albert H. Krehbiel, once an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago. Through his artwork, he sought to convey the values that are the north star of the Court: truth and justice. From there, our tour guide began to teach us about the history of our state’s Supreme Court. We were able to see a room whose walls were adorned with the faces and names of each justice who had served on the Court. As one might expect, for more than a century of the Court’s history, the Court was made up exclusively of white men. But, as the years progressed and the timeline crept closer to present day, diversity slowly crept in. Now, as I was pleasantly surprised to learn, our Supreme Court is one of the most diverse in the nation: the women on the Court make up a 5-2 majority, and there are three justices who are people of color.
As our tour continued, my understanding of the depth of the history contained within the walls of the building only deepened. We were lucky enough to have the chance to see paintings that were more than a century old and to see sculptures and other works of art dedicated to some of the most important figures in our state’s history. Before we left the Court, my team and I made one final stop in the building’s courtroom. Standing there, gazing at the seven seats lined up behind the Court’s bench, the legacy of our state’s history had never felt so close.
Adeyemi Kasali is a student from Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School, located in Flossmoor, IL.