Before the hearing began, the hallway outside the courtroom was packed with people hoping to get a seat. Some were law students who had come because they sensed that a legal precedent was being set, though not necessarily a good one. The way Maduro was captured “puts the system of international law in danger,” Leo Enderle, a German student at NYU, told me. Another group of people had come for the sheer spectacle. The man standing in front of me said he had attended the arraignments of Sean Combs and Donald Trump in the same building; according to him, this crowd was just as big. When I arrived, he was outraged that a Venezuelan man had cut in line to join a friend. The Venezuelan explained that he had been a political prisoner for years and had dreamed of this moment. Just because you were a political prisoner, the man in front of me was lamenting, doesn’t mean you get to cut the line.