Senate Judiciary Clears Cameras to Enter Supreme Court

The bill moves next to the full Senate, but no floor vote has been scheduled. Durbin, who is Democratic whip, is working with the bill’s cosponsors and hopes to move the bill to the floor “soon,” a Democratic Senate staffer said. Meanwhile, a House companion bill (HR-3572) by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is pending before the House Judiciary Committee. A Connolly spokesman said there’s been no movement on the bill.

The SCOTUS TV bill is an “important transparency measure,” particularly given the great impact that the court’s decisions have on all Americans, said Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. With the high court to hold arguments next month on the national healthcare law, now is the right time to let cameras inside, he said. Some justices don’t want to be televised because they don’t want to be made fun of or see their quotes taken out of context, Leahy said. But senators put up with that all the time, he said. Justices already give public speeches and book tours, he added.

S-1945 cosponsor Grassley said Leahy made a “very compelling” argument and asked to associate himself with the chairman’s remarks. “I hope we can get it passed,” he said. But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former state supreme court justice, was the only other Republican to join Grassley in supporting the bill. At a December hearing, other Republicans said they feared the bill would inappropriately politicize the Supreme Court (CD Dec 7 p10).

Feinstein said she was not mollified by an exemption in the bill allowing a majority of justices to keep cameras out of cases in which they believe filming might violate parties’ due process rights. The exception “is so narrow, that it [will be] rarely used,” she said. Feinstein fears that the bill, if passed, will encourage attorneys and justices to “perform” before the cameras to the detriment of justice. She referenced the O.J. Simpson trial as an example of a case made theatrical by the media. Five of the justices are against cameras, Feinstein added. “The court does not want this."

"Times will change,” countered Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. The younger justices support cameras, and future justices are likely to embrace them as well, she said. The five justices cited by Feinstein as not supporting cameras can take advantage of the bill’s exception provision, she said. State courts that allow filming have had no problems, Klobuchar noted.

Attorneys’ fear of the Supreme Court justices will prevent theatrics in the court room, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “The fear that public access will somehow harm the process runs exactly counter to the purpose of the process itself.” Leahy agreed that the Simpson case was a “media circus,” but said there’s a “huge difference between a trial and an appellate argument.” The latter is time-limited and more structured, he said. It would be “hard to find” an appellate litigant “that wants to grandstand,” he said.

Openness is the best way to fight the “distortion about what goes on in our government by some of the media,” Leahy said. “At a time when people feel more and more alienated from their government,” government should open itself so people can see what is actually happening, he said. The Senate “didn’t collapse” when hearings were first broadcast on the radio or TV, he said. “The more openness, the better off we are as a democracy.”