Public Trial in the Age of Internet

Abstract:     
The Judicial Conference of the United States has a longstanding policy prohibiting television and other electronic media coverage of federal district court proceedings. The public is losing a great deal from being deprived of easy access to the proceedings in its courts. Despite the top-down command to ban cameras, bottom-up resistance seems to be gaining momentum in the district and circuit courts. Internet access to gavel-to-gavel digital recording of public court proceedings would allow all who are interested to follow the proceedings. Those who would deny the public that access ought at least to bear the burden of rationally explaining why the public should be excluded from what purport to be public trials.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 25

working papers series