Now that the U.S. Supreme Court is back in the swing of things, so too is the arduous process ordinary citizens must endure to witness the justices at work—waiting hours for a slim chance to score a ticket.

It's an awful tradition that undermines the very principles upon which the institution was built. A trip to see the high court at work requires taking a day off from your own job and spending hours braving the elements for merely the chance at a seat inside. Not exactly democracy in action.

Even so, I took my 9-year-old daughter to hear oral arguments last term in the Maryland  "Peace Cross" consolidated cases thinking that her exposure to the court far outweighed the pain of a long line. I wanted her to understand how valuable the institution is to our country, to the preservation of democracy and even to her own life.

Instead, the lesson she learned that day was that visiting the U.S. Supreme Court can be a humiliating, insulting and, despite the words wrought upon the building's edifice, fundamentally unjust experience.

We arrived at 3:45 a.m. on a freezing February day and found ourselves the 42nd and 43rd people in line. A court police officer told us, "50 is the magic number," so we were nearly guaranteed seats inside. As my young daughter slept on the concrete sidewalk outside the court cocooned in blankets, I couldn't help but notice the absurdity of it all. But then it got worse.

After we spent three hours waiting, those who had paid people to wait in line arrived and stepped into their spots in the queue. Thirty-six people replaced 24 line-holders. The officers were unconcerned that the rest of us were put out by the additional people in line—even those of us bumped out of qualifying for our seats in the courtroom. Fifty tickets were handed to the "first" 50 people, and my daughter and I found ourselves near the beginning of what was now the line allowing us to enter court for a paltry three minutes at a time. But first, we'd have to wait another three hours outside.

Just before entering the courtroom, we finally felt some excitement. We had been through a lot to get to that point, and we were prepared. In the weeks leading up to that day, I created an after-school curriculum for my daughter called "SCOTUS School." I taught her the facts of the day's case and a song to remember each justice's name. She sought to learn more about the women she began to see as role models by reading a biography of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and watching the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic, "On the Basis of Sex."

But upon being ushered into the courtroom, the seat for my daughter did not afford her a view of any of the justices she'd come to watch. She stood up (equaling the height of any seated adult) and was admonished by a guard to sit down. I set her on my lap and the guard commanded that she sit in her own chair. She dutifully sat and silently cried for those three minutes.

For my daughter, seeing the Supreme Court was anything but enjoyable, and it made her question whether a body of government meant to be working for her cared about her at all. For me, it was certainly educational. I've long understood the rules for witnessing arguments to be ridiculous and unfair, but that day I realized those rules benefited only those who could afford to pay to wait in line.

My daughter wrote to Ginsburg and Sotomayor about our experience, and I wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts. The marshal of the court responded with an invitation to return with reserved seats so we didn't have to wait again. But it shouldn't take a frustrated father and an earnest young girl to have a bad experience before being granted a good one.

It is my hope that the court considers a fairer way for the public to experience oral arguments, one that doesn't debase both our democracy and those who attempt to observe it. We weren't the only ones who waited in line for hours that day, and hundreds more have already experienced similar waits this term.

Americans are accustomed to the corrupting influence of money in our government. Have we reached the nadir when citizens cannot even witness their judiciary without buying a seat?

Keith T.W. Anderko is a former union organizer and longtime labor activist. He works for Union Plus, a nonprofit provider of union member benefits and discounts. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two children. His daughter's favorite Amendment is the Fourth.