High court edges toward openness with planned audiotape release
By The Associated Press
11.30.00
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's decision to let Americans hear
tomorrow's historic Florida presidential election argument on the same day is a
huge first for a court so tradition-bound it still hands out quill pens as
souvenirs to lawyers.
Although the case won't be broadcast live, the court
will release its tape recording
shortly after the argument ends. As always, there will be no television or
still cameras.
But it's another sign that the nation's highest court is edging into
the electronic age. The justices opened their own
Internet site last spring, and
this week's online posting of briefs in the George W. Bush-Al Gore election war
was another first for the court.
Contrast this with the Florida Supreme Court, which let the nation
watch and listen live as it heard arguments Nov. 20 in Bush's bid to throw out
hand-counted ballots that Gore hopes will help him win the presidency.
Florida's top court launched its
Web site years ago, and
anyone with the right computer equipment can see arguments live over the
Internet or tap into the archives for arguments in past cases.
At the nation's highest court, the public and media are not allowed to
bring cameras, tape recorders or other electronic equipment to argument
sessions. People sitting in the public section are not even allowed to take
notes.
In Florida, members of the public can bring cameras for snapshots of
the court in action, so long as they don't use flashes or create a
disturbance.
"We adopted a philosophy that if people knew more about government
because they could see it, they'd be a lot better off," said Gerald Kogan, the
former Florida chief justice who launched the regular television coverage in
1997. "I think the Supreme Court of the United States is absolutely dead wrong
in not doing it."
Most of the justices disagree. Justice David Souter said in 1996, "I
think the case is so strong that I can tell you the day you see a camera come
into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body."
Souter said that camera coverage affected his behavior when he was a
judge in New Hampshire because he believed questions he might ask from the
bench would appear as snippets on the evening news.
"I don't think it's a question of modern versus old-fashioned," said
Boston University law professor Jack Beermann. "There is a view among a lot of
judges that putting cameras in, especially a TV camera, changes the dynamics in
a courtroom for the worse."
"Maybe the justices would feel they have to restrain some of their
sharper questioning," Beermann continued.
Columbia University law professor Michael Dorf said the justices also
believe that "If the public comes to see the justices as simply a collection of
individuals with particular views about various issues, they will lose some of
their capacity to speak as an institution."
There also is the question of privacy. "The justices are probably the
most powerful anonymous people in the United States, and having their faces on
television would undermine that," Dorf said.
Until this week, the court has waited until after a term ends each
summer before releasing audiotapes of that term's arguments. It began doing
that only in 1993, after a college professor forced the issue by getting
argument tapes under a scholarly research agreement and then making them public
himself.
The Supreme Court has started posting its argument transcripts online,
but only about 10 to 15 days after the argument. While transcripts of events in
the rest of official Washington become available almost immediately, same-day
Supreme Court transcripts are available only with payment of a large fee to the
reporting service used by the court.
The justices' own attitudes toward computers vary. Souter cheerfully
admits to being computer illiterate. "You are talking with a Luddite when
you're talking with me," he told a House subcommittee last spring. "Everybody
around me is using computers."
Justice Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, told the same House panel,
"Our job is rather portable with computers. We're able to work any place in the
world."
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