Two Cents From the Editor: Cameras in the Supreme Court

In the seventh year of this very secretive presidency, the public tends to favor full disclosure on just about everything relating to our political process.  The full disclosure of how members of Congress spend their vacation time.  The full disclosure of CIA documents such as the National Intelligence Estimate.  The full disclosure on how taxpayer money is being spent in Iraq -- although, that part has not happened just yet.  Most of this call for greater transparency is done with the hopeful intent of preserving our democratic representative system that has made us a credible world leader until recent years.

This week, the effort to make our government more honest and transparent has taken a new turn.  Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and a bipartisan group of Senators want to pass legislation that would allow cameras in the high court so that cases could be broadcast on television.  The Supreme Court already allows audio tapes.  But the proponents of this legislation want both audio and visual access.

Now you can call me a conservative or whatever -- but I really worry about what Specter has proposed.  In this age of new media where entertaining sound-bites always outweigh the value of substantive information, opening our court up to visual technology might encourage justices to become more political, and egg them on to outdo one another in front of a national audience hungry for hard-hitting one-liners.  Justice Kennedy said it best yesterday during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  "Please don't introduce into the dynamics I have with my colleagues the insidious temptation that one of my colleagues is trying to get a sound bite for the cameras," Kennedy told lawmakers.

Still don't agree?  If cameras are allowed in the high court, future presidents will change the criteria that influences which kinds of justices they nominate.  Choosing a nominee that is best able to verbally promote that president's political ideology to a wide audience would trump all else.  Would that really be healthy for our democracy?  Justices are supposed to speak in legal language and give legal rulings, not compete with one another to get their content on Youtube.