Courts: an Open Door

In a groundbreaking decision Tuesday, California’s high court upheld the public’s constitutional right of access to civil trials, extending a long line of precedents that assure public presence in criminal trials. The unanimous court was right in ruling that the same public policy that opened courtrooms in criminal cases applies in all civil cases as well: The public has an interest “in observing and assessing the performance of its public judicial system.”

The ruling represents a significant victory for the defenders of the 1st Amendment right of public access to courtrooms. In language reminiscent of this century’s landmark civil rights decisions, Chief Justice Ronald M. George said, “In either the civil or criminal courtroom, secrecy insulates the participants, masking impropriety, obscuring incompetence and concealing corruption.”

It is also a harsh rebuke to judges in Los Angeles who, in an effort to prevent the kind of hectic media coverage that surrounded the O.J. Simpson trial, have been gagging the press, sealing court records and shutting the courtroom doors to reporters.

Judicial arrogance is glaringly apparent in court orders arbitrarily banishing the public from trials involving celebrities. The signs that judges have lost sight of the courts’ essential role as public institutions are also evident in decisions curtailing access to judicial proceedings and in the growing practice of sealing court records of settlements in product injury and other civil cases. This is being done solely for judicial convenience, not the public interest. However, judges will retain the right to legitimately protect litigants, particularly in cases involving minors.

In the case before the justices, The Times, KNBC-TV and California Community News had been denied access to portions of court proceedings involving a contractual dispute between two movie actors, Clint Eastwood and his former companion, Sondra Locke. Trial Judge David M. Schacter barred media access in order to prevent the jury from knowing about items excluded from evidence. His reason was that in a “higher-profile case,” such as this one, gagging the press was “a very small intrusion on the 1st Amendment.”

This is an affront not only to the 1st Amendment but to the jury system on which American jurisprudence is based. It presumes that jurors will violate their oath and disregard judges’ instructions to avoid media coverage. The California Supreme Court rightly rejected this argument. “It must be assumed,” it wrote, “that a jury does its duty, abides by cautionary instructions and finds facts only because facts are proved.”

The high court’s instruction to California judges is clear: Proceedings may be closed to the public only in the rarest of circumstances, after a hearing and for “sufficient reasons.”

The significance of this decision cannot be overstated. It restores the openness of the judicial process that is so essential in a democratic society.