Our View: Televise oral arguments

• Published: Jul 11, 2009 - Page: 8B

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Confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor should include a question about her views on televising Supreme Court oral arguments.

We believe televising the arguments is a good idea. We hope Sotomayor is asked her opinion on the subject, and we hope she supports televising the Supreme Court’s public proceedings, too.

Even if she supported the idea, Sotomayor alone couldn’t bring televised proceedings to the court. But if there were a consensus among the justices in support of the idea, we suspect it would happen.

Sotomayor is being nominated to fill the seat being vacated by Justice David Souter, who once said, “The day you see a camera come into our courtroom it’s going to roll over my dead body.”

There are numerous objections to televising Supreme Court oral arguments, including the fear that televised proceedings will somehow diminish the dignity of the court. These same objections were raised when the idea of routinely televising Congress first surfaced. But the nonprofit cable channel C-SPAN has been televising proceedings on Capitol Hill for years, and we do not believe Congress has suffered as a result. In fact, televising Congress has helped make the institution more transparent and accountable.

When the Supreme Court heard the case involving disputed Florida election results in the 2000 presidential contest, C-SPAN requested televising the arguments. In response, the court granted instant audiotape release of that case’s oral arguments. Since then, the court has allowed selected same-day oral argument audio to be released in response to subsequent C-SPAN requests.
Sotomayor comes from a court, New York’s 2nd Circuit, that allows cameras in the courtroom. Sotomayor has been televised conducting her legal business on that court.

If the Supreme Court does open its oral arguments to cameras, C-SPAN plans to carry all of the oral arguments in their entirety.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., said he plans to ask Sotomayor for her views on the subject during her confirmation hearings. Specter, a former prosecutor, supports having the Supreme Court’s oral arguments televised.

We hope Sotomayor does, too.