Televising Supreme Court Hearings Is A Terrible Idea

It really is amazing the number of ways Congress finds to waste American taxpayers’ time and money.

As if there aren’t any other pressing matters to attend to, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a pair of bills on Thursday allowing for the Supreme Court and other federal courts to televise their courtroom proceedings to the public. Both measures passed by voice vote and now head to the full Senate for consideration, according to a committee press release.

Sponsored by Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Cameras in the Courtroom Act would “permit television coverage of all open sessions of the [Supreme] Court unless the Court decides, by a vote of the majority of justices, that allowing such coverage in a particular case would constitute a violation of the due process rights of 1 or more of the parties before the Court.”

Meanwhile, the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act — sponsored by Grassley, Durbin, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and others — would similarly extend this option to federal appellate and district courts. The bill includes additional provisions related to witness and juror protection and procedures for enacting such guidelines.

Under current practice, the Supreme Court livestreams audio of its oral arguments and releases transcripts of the hearings following their conclusion. As noted by Courthouse News, the federal judiciary has “long prohibited attendees and the media from recording court in session.”

The bills’ proponents predictably rushed to portray them as a step toward ensuring judicial “transparency.” By televising these proceedings, they claimed, Americans would become better informed about what goes on in courtrooms around the country.

But can anybody who’s tuned into a congressional hearing over the past few years really claim with a straight face that putting government officials on camera has benefited America? Sure, citizens can see lawmakers’ deliberations on their TV or phone screens, but what specific advantage are they getting from it?

What were once intended to be serious floor debates and hearings have devolved into performative slugfests. Representatives and senators alike aren’t focused on debating great matters of public policy so much as they are trying to one-up one another and grab coveted soundbites for cable news and social media.

There is no reason to believe putting cameras in the courtroom would yield a different result.

Rogue judges are already becoming theatrical in their overreaching rulings against the Trump administration and Republicans. Putting them on camera would just give them the chance to broadcast those dramatics out into the information sphere for their media fanbase.

And if that argument wasn’t convincing enough, think of it this way: If Ketanji Brown Jackson’s oral argument antics sound bad on audio, imagine how much worse she’d be on camera. It’d be like giving Hunter Biden a bag of coke and the neighborhood hooker’s phone number and expecting him to behave himself.

Americans don’t need cameras in the courtroom. What they need is a Congress that functions like a serious body. It’s a shame that today’s lawmakers are incapable of being that.