Opinion ID: 3011956
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Relaxing the Richmond Newspapers experience

Text: requirement would lead to perverse consequences. As we have explained in detail supra, there is no fundamental right of access to administrative proceedings. Any such access, therefore, must initially be granted as a matter of executive grace.12 The Government contends that by relaxing the need for a 1000-year tradition of public access, (Gov’t Br. at 35), we would permanently constitutionalize a right of access whenever an executive agency does not consistently bar all public access to a particular proceeding. We do not adopt this reasoning in its _________________________________________________________________ 12. The Newspapers disagree, arguing that the constitutional right of access under the First Amendment does not, and could not, turn on whether the legislature has chosen to supply that right. We believe this reasoning to be precisely backwards, for Richmond Newspapers requires a tradition of access before recognizing a constitutional right to that access. Given that order of events, there must perforce be a period of time during which access to a particular proceeding is not constitutionally compelled, although during that period the executive could, of course, grant access as a matter of grace. 29 entirety, for as we have discussed supra, we have sometimes found a constitutional right of access to proceedings that did not exist at common law. See, e.g., Simone, 14 F.3d at 837-40 (finding a public access right to post-trial jury examinations). Nevertheless, we agree with the Government that a rigorous experience test is necessary to preserve the basic tenet of administrative law that agencies should be free to fashion their own rules of procedure. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519, 544 (1978). Were we to adopt the Newspapers’ view that we can recognize a First Amendment right based solely on the logic prong if there is no history of closure, we would effectively compel the Executive to close its proceedings to the public ab initio or risk creating a constitutional right of access that would preclude it from closing them in the future. Under such a system, reserved powers of closure would be meaningless. It seems possible that, ironically, such a system would result in less public access than one in which a constitutional right of access is more difficult to create. At all events, we would find this outcome incredible in an area of traditional procedural flexibility, and we are unwilling to reach it when a reasonable alternative is present. By insisting on a strong tradition of public access in the Richmond Newspapers test, we preserve administrative flexibility and avoid constitutionalizing ambiguous, and potentially unconsidered, executive decisions.