18a286987c8a40ac91c3af82855c22f040U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter once famously told a congressional subcommittee, “The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.”
The nation's highest court has long fought efforts to broadcast its proceedings, so any court watcher unable to secure a place in the courtroom must glean what information he can from transcripts or audio recordings.
But a growing number of state supreme courts are taking a different approach, throwing open their courtrooms, and live webcasting all their oral arguments, making those proceedings instantly accessible for anyone who might want to watch, or at least as many viewers as their systems can handle.
Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, West Virginia, New Jersey, North Dakota, Maryland and Florida are among the states that webcast oral arguments, sometimes teaming up with a local law school to do it.
“I think this is a good thing, and I'm glad to see courts doing it,” said Robert Ambrogi, a Massachusetts-based attorney and media consultant. “I think anything that courts do to promote public understanding of what they do is certainly beneficial.”
There are also other ways for attorneys to watch live broadcasts of cases that might not typically attract the public's interest.
Before hopes of an exciting patent licensing battle between Nokia Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. were dashed by an eleventh-hour settlement deal, patent law blogs were abuzz with the news that Courtroom View Network would be broadcasting the Delaware Court of Chancery trial, charging viewers $400 a day.
The case was an unusual opportunity for patent attorneys to see a live webcast of a patent fight, since it was being litigated in a state court. Patent disputes usually unfold in federal court, where cameras are typically banned.
The Judicial Conference of the United States, the principal policymaking body of the U.S. court system, remains staunchly opposed to proposals to allow cameras into federal courts, citing concerns that allowing coverage could jeopardize the right of a citizen to obtain a fair trial.
Still, Courtroom View Network has had some limited success getting access to federal court proceedings. In March, U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York agreed to open his courtroom to the company's cameras, allowing CVN to broadcast proceedings in multidistrict product liability litigation over Eli Lilly & Co.'s Zyprexa.
In his order, Judge Weinstein said the Judicial Conference's opposition to televised district court proceedings, while worthy of consideration, was not the final word on the matter. Rather, he said, the First Amendment compelled courts to be open to the public whenever possible.
A similar viewpoint has prompted the push by many state supreme courts to webcast their oral arguments. Justice Souter delivered his dramatic denouncement of cameras in the courtroom in 1996, just one year before Florida's Supreme Court began to live-broadcast its oral arguments.
The Florida Supreme Court, an early pioneer of the practice, has been webcasting its oral arguments, and even broadcasting them on cable TV, since 1997. The court also provides satellite feeds.
State officials who control the satellite transponder were initially concerned that there wouldn't be enough demand for the broadcasts, but after a few months, it became clear that oral arguments from the state supreme court were getting the most traffic, said Craig Waters, director of the court's public information office.
Usage of the Florida service certainly peaked during the 2000 presidential election dispute, with the satellite uplink feeding to news networks worldwide.
At CVN, where viewers are typically attorneys, financial sector professionals, law school students or educators, the types of cases that attract a significant live audience are varied, but they have often been pharmaceutical product liability cases, or cases in the Delaware Chancery Court, CVN managing director John Shin said.
“We like to think we've gotten a fairly good handle on what would be hot versus not. But we're still learning,” Shin said.
Webcasts are increasingly used by law schools as teaching tools, and by attorneys looking to research a court, or even a future legal adversary. Transcripts of oral arguments have long been available, but viewing a proceeding provides a wealth of information that can't be gleaned from a stack of paper.
Todd Smith, an appellate lawyer based in Austin, Texas, where the state supreme court has been webcasting oral arguments in a joint venture with St. Mary's University School of Law for more than a year, said the program has been well-received.
“I think from an appellate lawyer's standpoint, it's a useful tool,” Smith said. “It gives you a better sense of what a court is interested in with a case.”
Still, questions have been raised over whether the presence of a camera would influence how judges and attorneys behave in court.
Waters said he's heard attorneys joke that the broadcasts are a little added pressure for them, because they know their bosses could be watching.
But state supreme courts with webcasting experience say it makes little difference in the courtroom.
“For the most part, if you're a lawyer standing before your state supreme court, you're thinking about your client and your case, and not which is your good side for the camera,” Ambrogi said. “Probably what you're thinking about first and foremost is: what are they going to ask you next?”
There is also a growing public level of comfort with multimedia. In many professions, cameras are becoming less and less surprising, and for many state supreme courts, they are now just another part of the court's culture. And cultures adapt quickly.
In September 1997, on the first day the Florida Supreme Court broadcast its oral arguments, Waters remembered there was a significant expectation that the broadcast would fail.
But once it became clear that everything was actually going to work, Waters said he slipped a note to the chief justice.
“He announced first thing that for the first time in our history we were being broadcast live,” said Waters.
That news was apparently too much for the first attorney scheduled to argue before the court. He fainted, and anyone tuning in to the court's inaugural broadcast saw a clear shot of the chief justice asking whether there was a doctor in the house.63731002008/08/24 00:00State Courts Embrace On-Camera CultureThursday, Jul 31, 20082008/07/242008/07/24142008/07/311Want to tune in to an exciting oral argument, but can't swing the trip to the courthouse? As long as the case is in state court, there are a growing number of opportunities to get a front-row seat without leaving the office.