Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters. E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who led the Watergate break-in team, were stationed in a Watergate Hotel room while the burglary was underway. A lookout was posted across the street at the Howard Johnson Hotel.
The judge, however, remains above the fray, providing an independent and impartial assessment of the facts and how the law applies to those facts. Many criminal cases - and almost all civil ones - are heard by a judge sitting without a jury. The judge is the trier of fact, deciding whether the evidence is credible and which witnesses are telling the truth.
Its staff of law clerks, sitting as its certiorari panel, plays a large role in the selection of the few cases it agrees to decide, so that the Justices provide a model for lower court judges opting to delegate their scutwork to staff, and to limit their own chores to those that are more fun.