But C-SPAN demonstrated in a test not long ago that limited fixed cameras are barely noticeable in the massive courtroom, and no sound equipment is necessary beyond the court's own system. No one was allowed to rest on rhetoric, and the judges themselves made sure that hard questions were addressed and nice points were fully developed. Cameras distort what the court does. This argument applies less to live, unedited coverage than to the fear of clips and sound bites. Even if acceptance of the election is not necessarily on the line Friday, viewers would understand better what the most powerful but least understood court in the world actually does when it hears a case.
Television is vulgar.
After the Florida court's performance, by judge and lawyer alike, Justice Kennedy's arch dismissal of televised coverage sounds hollow and terribly dated. Souter made his remark off the cuff in a congressional hearing on the court's budget four years ago, but if there is a reasoned position behind his acid comment he has yet to provide it. Shortly before he retired in 1993 after 31 years on the court, Justice Byron White admitted that one of his primary reasons for opposing cameras in the Supreme Court was that he knew his privacy would be compromised. Perhaps at bottom that is the most powerful reason behind the court's intransigence on the issue. That is a perk of the job, but denying public scrutiny of the court in action should not continue to be one, too.