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<div class="">February 18, 2013</div>
<h1>Bucking a Trend, Supreme Court Justices Reject Video Coverage</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/adam_liptak/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by ADAM LIPTAK"><span>ADAM LIPTAK</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
WASHINGTON — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, populist, revealed a paternalistic
streak this month, announcing that she had rethought her enthusiasm for
video coverage of Supreme Court arguments. </p>
<p>
At her <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/politics/14confirm-text.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">confirmation hearings</a>
in 2009, she said she was in favor of letting citizens see their
government at work. “I have had positive experiences with cameras,” she
said. “When I have been asked to join experiments of using cameras in
the courtroom, I have participated. I have volunteered.” </p>
<p>
She was singing a different tune a couple of weeks ago, <a title="video" href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12765">telling Charlie Rose</a>
that most Americans would not understand what goes on at Supreme Court
arguments and that there was little point in letting them try. </p>
<p>
“I don’t think most viewers take the time to actually delve into either
the briefs or the legal arguments to appreciate what the court is
doing,” she said. “They speculate about, oh, the judge favors this point
rather than that point. Very few of them understand what the process
is, which is to play devil’s advocate.” </p>
<p>
As a descriptive matter, she was right: making sense of a Supreme Court
argument without substantial preparation is hard. But Justice
Sotomayor’s approach also sounds like an intellectual poll tax that
could just as well justify limiting attendance in the courtroom to
people smart enough and diligent enough to know what is going on.
</p>
<p>
The court’s newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, has also done an about-face. At her <a title="transcript" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/KAGANHEARINGSDAY2.pdf">confirmation hearings</a>
in 2010, she said video coverage “would be a great thing for the
institution, and more important, I think it would be a great thing for
the American people.” Two years later, <a title="news coverage" href="http://www.annarbor.com/news/supreme-court-justice-elena-kagan-discusses-the-serious-and-not-so-serious-workings-of-the-high-cour/">she said</a> she now had “a few worries, including that people might play to the camera” and that the coverage could be misused. </p>
<p>
Even as the Supreme Court is digging in its heels, nations with legal
systems similar to the one in the United States are moving in the other
direction. </p>
<p>
<a title="court web site" href="http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/index.html">The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom</a>,
which was formed in 2009, allows camera coverage. Last month, Lord
Chief Justice Igor Judge, the head of the judiciary for England and
Wales, <a title="news account" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/jan/30/tv-cameras-appeal-court-warning">announced</a> that cameras would be allowed in appeal courts starting in October, after judges receive media training. </p>
<p>
Lord Judge agreed with Justice Sotomayor, to a point. “I suspect John
and Jane Citizen will find it incredibly dull,” he told a committee of
the House of Lords. But that did not seem to him a reason to prevent
them from trying to make sense of the proceedings. </p>
<p>
Arguments in the <a title="court site" href="http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/">Supreme Court of Canada</a> have been broadcast since the mid-1990s, and more recently they have been <a title="Supreme Court of Canada site" href="http://scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/webcastlive-webdiffusiondirect-eng.aspx">streamed live</a> on the Internet. </p>
<p>
Owen M. Rees, the court’s executive legal officer, said the experience had been positive. </p>
<p>
“The filming of the Supreme Court of Canada’s hearings has increased the
public’s access to the court and its understanding of the court’s
work,” he said. “Of course, each court must make its own evaluation of
whether introducing cameras in the courtroom would be appropriate.”
</p>
<p>
In <a title="text" href="http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/court-cour/ju/spe-dis/bm2012-01-31-eng.asp">a speech last year</a>, <a title="bio" href="http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/court-cour/ju/mclachlin/index-eng.asp">Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin</a> of Canada suggested that the American court system might have things backward. </p>
<p>
In the United States, cameras are commonplace in state trial and appeals
courts, and the lower federal courts have experimented with them. Only
in the Supreme Court is there categorical resistance. </p>
<p>
“The general practice in Canada is precisely the opposite,” Chief
Justice McLachlin said. “Canadian trial courts have generally not
permitted their hearings to be broadcast on television, where witnesses
are involved.” </p>
<p>
Lord Judge made a similar point, saying he would draw the line at
criminal trials before juries, for fear that witnesses might be
intimidated. </p>
<p>
A pair of new law review articles tries to make sense of the gaps between the American and international approaches. </p>
<p>
In <a title=""The Conundrum of Cameras in the Courtroom" " href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1969115">one of them</a>,
in The Arizona State Law Journal, Nancy S. Marder, who teaches at the
Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology,
noted correctly that “most countries do not allow cameras in their
courtrooms” and concluded that “cameras in federal courtrooms will do
more harm than good at this time.” In an interview, she said she worried
about a culture in which “everything becomes entertainment, focusing on
the gaffe.” </p>
<p>
But Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Oregon’s
journalism school, said the United States Supreme Court was betraying a
distinctively American commitment to free expression and access to
information. </p>
<p>
“The U.K. and Canadian justices had their own worries and concerns when they opened up their doors to cameras,” <a title=""Cameras in the Courtroom in the Twenty-First Century: The U.S. Supreme Court Learning From Abroad?" href="http://www.lawreview.byu.edu/articles/1360814461_10.youm.fin.pdf">he wrote</a> in The Brigham Young University Law Review. “However, these justices now concede they were wrong.” </p>
<p>
“Many people outside the U.S. are wondering,” Dr. Youm said in an
interview, “why the U.S. is so calcified in its thinking about cameras
in the Supreme Court.” </p>
<p>
Tony Mauro, a reporter with The National Law Journal and a student of the arguments for and against cameras, proposed an answer <a title="The article" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1945361">in an article</a>
in 2011. “The root of almost every objection the justices have
expressed about camera access,” he wrote, “is the justices’ deeply held
feeling that their court is exceptional — unlike any other public
institution.” </p>
<p>
Mr. Mauro was onto something. At <a title="video" href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300203-1">a judicial conference in 2011,</a>
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the federal appeals court in Richmond,
Va., asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for his position on
cameras and got a telling response. The chief justice had been
considering the international context. </p>
<p>
“The Supreme Court is different,” he said, “not only domestically, but in terms of its impact worldwide.” </p>
<p>
Chief Justice Roberts said he worried about the effect that cameras
would have on lawyers and, perhaps more important, on the justices, who
may have less self-control than their counterparts abroad. </p>
<p>
“We unfortunately fall into grandstanding with a couple of hundred people in the room,” the chief justice said. </p>
<div class="">
<p><span class="">This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:</span></p><p><strong>Correction: February 18, 2013</strong></p><p><span class=""></span></p><p>An
earlier version of this article reported incorrectly that an article by
Nancy S. Marder would be published in The Brigham Young University Law
Review next month. The article will be published in The Arizona State
Law Journal later this month.</p>
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