Dumbing down our judicial system

Why cameras should not be allowed in the Supreme Court.

During my experience as a political science student, I spent a great deal of time studying the effect that media has on political culture, and even visa versa.  I came away from that experience very disturbed about how some complex political topics get dumbed down to fit our fast-paced culture.  One of my concerns centers around our Judicial Branch of government -- even more specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court.

There has been a plethora of discussion over the last two years over whether U.S. Supreme Court cases should be televised for the American people to see, just as any presidential news conference.  Certainly, there are a few legitimate reasons for doing so:

• Many state Supreme Court cases are televised anyway.
• Young Americans could learn more about the U.S. Supreme Court, and so could adults.  Judging from the fact that a whopping 57% of the country cannot even name one Supreme Court justice, putting the cases on television might help more Americans better understand that branch of government.
• The Judicial Branch will get more coverage from the news networks.  The 24/7 political news always reports on the battles in the Legislative and Executive Branches.  The kind that happen in a judicial setting are about issues, precedent and the constitution -- not petty attacks on character.  These intellectually controlled discussions might raise the bar for lawmakers and the White House.

Even when considering what television could do in terms of raising interest about the Judicial Branch, there is a whole other side to this that worries me. 

Everyone wants to look appealing on television -- both visually and rhetorically.  In 2000, we watched how Al Gore's intellect and nuanced grasp of the issues was portrayed by the media as nerdy.  It does not look "cool" to obsess about things that most people don't understand -- as was the case in 2000 with Social Security (i.e. "locked box", which when you look back on it was not such a bad idea after all).  Gore was the nerdy basket case and Bush was one of those funny friends of the family that you meet at a barbecue.  So, in today's media age, who do you think won?

To get right to the point, the worry is that judges might feel pressured to start acting differently in the court room.  The style of debate would change to the kind we see nightly on infotainment shows like the O'Reilly Factor, which is plagued with formal fallacy after formal fallacy.  Remember, the justices are all humans.  None of them wants to be made fun of by the media -- even if it is a tabloid joking about how they dress.  Why not leave one branch of government as a completely intellectual setting, so that justices can focus on the specificity of each case rather than worrying about trying to sound appealing in a 24/7 news cycle?

Already, the Roberts era court has been very media-friendly, and has moved in the direction of opening the court to a national audience.  But is this the kind of Judicial Branch that our founders intended?  Do we want justices Scalia and Breyer to debate as intellectuals, or like guests on Hannity and Colmes?  That is what is at stake.