Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States
Courts: Issues for Congress (2019). Judges on lower federal courts and state courts have written articles reflecting on the positive and negative effects of cameras in their courtrooms. See Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, Some Reflections on Cameras in the Appellate Courtroom, 9 J. App. Prac. & Process 323 (2007); Robert L. Brown, Just a Matter of Time? Video Cameras at the United States Supreme Court and the State Supreme Courts, 9 J. App. Prac. & Process 1 (2007). See also Nancy S. Marder, The Conundrum of Cameras in the Courtroom, 44 Ariz. St. L.J. 1489 (2012) (collecting many of the competing arguments for and against cameras).
- ↑ See, e.g., Alito & Kagan House Testimony, supra note 121 (Justice Alito observing that “I recognize that most people think that our arguments should be televised. Most of the members of my family think that arguments should be televised. I used to think they should be televised. … But I came to see and I do believe that allowing the arguments to be televised would undermine their value to us as a step in the decisionmaking process. I think that lawyers would find it irresistible to try to put in a little sound bite in the hope of being that evening on CNN or FOX or MSNBC or one of the broadcast networks, and that would detract from the value of the arguments in the decisionmaking process”); Id. (Justice Kagan observing that “it is a principle of physics, I think, … [that] when the observer comes in, the observed thing changes. And you commented on Congress, and if you all were given truth serum, I think some of you might agree that hearings change when cameras are there”); Sonia Sotomayor, “Just Ask” & Life as a Supreme Court Justice – Extended Interview, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Sept. 16, 2019) (Justice Sotomayor arguing that “if our arguments were televised, it might change the dynamic,” for instance, “you would have more studied questions rather than those questions which are less studied and more inquisitive” and “the draw to play to TV affects every human being,” with the overall result that “I think you would change our institution so dramatically that it would be for its worse, not for the country’s better”), https://www.cc.com/video/hdash0/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-sonia-sotomayor-just-ask-life-as-a-supreme-court-justice-extended-interview.
- ↑ Visitor’s Guide to Oral Argument, Supreme Court of the United States, https://www.supremecourt.gov/visiting/visitorsguidetooralargument.aspx (last accessed Sept. 18, 2021).
- ↑ At the start of the 2015 Term, the Court announced: “Only Bar members who actually intend to attend argument will be allowed in the line for the bar section; ‘line standers’ will not be permitted.” Robert Barnes, Supreme Court Tells Lawyers: Stand in Line Yourselves. You Can’t Pay Others to Hold a Spot, Wash. Post (Oct. 6, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-bar-bans-line-standing-for-hearings/2015/10/06/a309e0e6-6c15-11e5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html; see Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 3 (June 30, 2021) (testimony of Amy Howe), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Testimony-of-Amy-Howe.pdf; Katie Bart, Courtroom Access: Line-Standing Businesses Save Spots in the Public Line, SCOTUSBlog (Apr. 15, 2020, 4:48 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/04/courtroom-access-line-standing-businesses-save-spots-in-the-public-line. For data on the number of people waiting in the public line for seats at each argument session during the 2019 Term (until the courtroom closed due to the pandemic), the share of people in line who were eventually seated, and when one would have needed to arrive in order to secure a seat, see Amy Howe, Courtroom Access: Let’s Talk Data—The Public Line, SCOTUSBlog (May 4, 2020, 6:47 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/category/special-features/courtroom-access-2020/.
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