For the fourth time in as many Congresses, a bill has
been introduced to compel the Supreme Court to televise its proceedings.
Earlier versions of the bill, which was sponsored in the House of
Representatives by members from both sides of the aisle, have failed to become
law. The justices have generally opposed any suggestion that their public
sessions should be televised, although all state supreme courts and some of the
lower federal courts do broadcast their proceedings.
The bill
would require the court to allow television coverage of “all open sessions of
the Court unless” a majority of the justices believes that doing so in a
particular case “would constitute a violation of the due process rights of one
of more of the parties before the” Supreme Court. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.,
said in a statement that “it strains credulity that this modest effort at
transparency would prove impossible or somehow inhibit the ability of our
Justices to hear cases in a fair manner.” His co-sponsor, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Tex.,
indicated that he was “one of the first judges in Texas to allow cameras in the
courtroom. It worked. A simple non-intrusive camera would allow for greater
transparency and greater faith in the decisions made by the Federal
Government.”
Roughly 50 seats
in the Supreme Court’s gallery are available to the public, on a first-come,
first-served basis. For very high-profile cases, like the 2013 arguments in the
challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage, some of the people seated
in the public section paid line-standers thousands of dollars to secure a seat for them.
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