No Day in Court for Public

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reflexive decision Monday to bar cameras from Friday’s momentous hearing on the Florida election challenge comes as no surprise. Last week, the C-SPAN network formally requested permission of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to provide pooled television and audio coverage of the hearing. Rehnquist, who along with most of his colleagues, has made no secret of his antipathy to cameras in the courtroom, should have granted that request.

The high court’s long-standing camera ban has far more to do with its fusty traditions and the justices’ own personal desires than logic. Their worry is that cameras would disrupt court decorum and tempt lawyers into displays of grandiloquence, even histrionics. But the experience in state courts, most of which permit cameras, greatly undermines those fears. Live coverage of last week’s arguments before the Florida Supreme Court, which routinely televises its proceedings, showed lawyers to be dignified and to the point.

Moreover, the Tallahassee court session was a compelling--and edifying--lesson in election law, focused on substance rather than partisan spin. Friday’s hearing in Washington promises to be no less so. Yet Americans will be limited to a written transcript of the U.S. Supreme Court proceedings and secondhand accounts from reporters.

C-SPAN had wanted to install small, fixed cameras and use only available light in the courtroom. Under these conditions, cameras would hardly be intrusive, nor would they be likely to spark the grandstanding the justices fret about. In fact, in 1994, following a three-year pilot project that allowed cameras in selected federal trial and appeals courts, the Federal Judicial Center, the courts’ research arm, concluded that the presence of cameras “did not disrupt court proceedings.”

Whichever way the high court rules in the Florida appeal, its decision will surely cast an aura of legitimacy over either Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s state-certified election victory or Vice President Al Gore’s remaining challenges in that state. Three weeks after Americans cast their ballots, they are anxious to know who will be their next president and to witness firsthand how the high court helps decide. Unfortunately, the justices’ personal likes and dislikes will overrule the reassurance that would come from letting us all hear and watch.