Courts

Senate Inches Closer To Forcing The Supreme Court To Televise Arguments

John Roberts prepares his symbolic middle finger.

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There’s a lot going on out there right now, but quietly wending its way through the legislative process is a bill that aims to open up the Supreme Court to the sort of basic transparency befitting a modern democracy.

Yeah, let’s see how this goes.

Just before the holiday, the Senate Judiciary approved the Cameras in the Courtroom Act 15-7. The bill, if enacted forces the Supreme Court to televise oral arguments and opinion announcements, “unless the Court decides, by a vote of the majority of justices, that allowing such coverage in a particular case would constitute a violation of the due process rights of 1 or more of the parties before the Court.” I feel like the justices are going to come up with a lot of reasons to sua sponte fear for the due process rights of the parties.

But even if the justices flagrantly blow off the statute — something of a trend for them these days! — or even if this bill never gets further than the Senate floor, just elevating Court transparency and forcing it into the headlines is a success for good governance.

Whatever the fate of these bills, today is an apt reminder that Congress has broad authority to set institutional policies in our federal courts, even in the Supreme Court, from where they meet, what kind of cases they hear and, yes, whether they’re permitted to close their hearings to 99.9% of the public despite what modern technology affords,” FTC’s Gabe Roth said.

But, of course, there are already disingenuous complaints from the likes of Ted Cruz:

“There’s an interest in the American people having access to and being able to see the workings of our branches of government,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. However, Cruz worries that cameras could “overly politicize” the High Court. He suggested that “you would see the lawyers for both sides behaving differently.”

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Holding seats open for a year and then turning around and ramming a Handmaid’s Tale villain onto the bench in a matter of weeks in the middle of a pandemic might also have “overly politicized” the High Court, but Ted doesn’t know anything about that. Mercifully, the whole “politicization” argument may finally be lurching toward its inevitable demise. No amount of unanimous opinions on mundane regulatory interpretations is keeping the public from forgetting the events of the last four years. Whether they love it or hate it, no one is belaboring under the opinion that its not nakedly political right now.

Well, except the people actually paid to cover the Supreme Court.

If anything, maybe a little sunshine would force the “institutionalists” to temper their actions and lower the partisan temperature.

“Trial lawyers are by nature, actors,” counters former Connecticut Attorney General and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I’ve been a trial lawyer. It’s a form of acting, in some ways. And, the trial is a form of playing. But the camera doesn’t make it more so. I think that it simply enlightens the public.”

Good for him for calling this out.

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Grandstanding? Yes, because the Supreme Court bar is known for its wild antics! We already have televised arguments that these same lawyers attend at the appellate level and it’s not a distracting nightmare. We have sovereign citizen nonsense broadcast from lower courts from time to time without collapsing the republic… and the Supreme Court doesn’t even have to deal with any of that. The state solicitors general interested in making asses of themselves for political gain are already doing that in their press conferences.

Now we wait to see if the justices can successfully dupe more lawmakers with weaksauce arguments like those Cruz is peddling. Given the history of this issue, it wouldn’t surprise me if they succeeded.

But, like a lot of things about the Court, they can only hold off reality for so long. They’ve had a decent run pretending to be the least dangerous branch too, but look where they are now.

Congress debates forcing staid Supreme Court to televise arguments [Fox News]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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