Senators should stop trying to turn the Supreme Court into reality TV

The United States Senate thrives on tradition. So, it figured that the Judiciary Committee would honor its longstanding practice of hectoring Supreme Court nominees about television cameras when Neil Gorsuch appeared for his confirmation hearings. Five different senators lectured Gorsuch about having Supreme Court proceedings broadcast on live television, a rare display of bi-partisan badgering.

Gorsuch dutifully fielded the television questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) by saying he would keep an “open mind” to the prospect. He had to reiterate his answers on the next day of hearings when committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) hounded Gorsuch to commit to making the Supreme Court a reality television show. Gorsuch again only promised to keep an open mind, knowing that he alone can’t decide the matter anyway.

{mosads}Congress’s obsession with forcing television cameras into the Supreme Court goes back over twenty years. But this is a decision that should be left to the Supreme Court itself, not to the Marshall McLuhan media theorist wannabees in the Senate who, unlike justices, never saw a television camera they didn’t want to jump in front of.

Senators who support television in the Supreme Court say the practice would enlighten the citizenry. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said televising hearings would serve an “educational role,” and be “enlightening to a lot of school kids and adults and others as to how our judiciary actually functions.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said SCOTUS television would “attract interest” and “would elevate the performance.”

But media technologies don’t necessarily make anybody more educated or elevate performance.  Television has been common in American households for sixty plus years, but high-consuming TV viewers are hardly ready to join the Mensa society. School kids are awash in media technologies not available a generation ago, but educational test scores have remained flat or dropped.  If senators want the public to be better informed about the Supreme Court, forcing television coverage of the Court is a foolish answer.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is a sponsor of legislation that would mandate camera coverage of the Supreme Court. He wants more SCOTUS transparency. Durbin said in a statement announcing his sponsorship, “Decisions made by the Supreme Court impact the lives of all Americans in every corner of the country, but their proceedings often don’t reach beyond the four walls of the court room.” That’s absurd, of course. National news outlets cover and report every SCOTUS action. That such reports get so little profile on the nation’s news agenda is the fault of the news organizations, not SCOTUS.

For its part, the Supreme Court already provides same day transcripts of all proceedings and decisions. Audio recordings are also provided in a timely manner.

While senators grumble about the need for education and transparency, they are forgetting the primary reason a Supreme Court exists in the first place. That reason is to serve the ends of justice, and to this point, the Court apparently believes television cameras don’t support that goal. Chief Justice John Roberts made that point clear when he addressed a judicial conference several years ago, saying “We don’t have oral arguments to show people, the public, how we function.”

The late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Gorsuch could fill, once said in an interview, “I think there’s something sick about making entertainment out of other people’s legal problems.” Gorsuch surely knows the thinking of his former mentor.

Justice Stephen Breyer discussed the televising of SCOTUS during a 2015 interview with CBS comedian Stephen Colbert. Breyer told the host that what is heard in courtroom oral arguments counts for only about five percent of the eventual legal decision, the rest being based on piles of briefs and documents the justices read.

Interestingly, Breyer was on the show to promote his latest book. Colbert commented that if Court hearings were televised, Breyer could just hold up his book in front of the cameras and save having to go on late night talk shows. That was supposed to be a joke, but it speaks to the larger issue of making celebrities out of Supreme Court justices.

The justices who make up the Supreme Court have enough sense to know when, if ever, television cameras are appropriate in their court room. For now, the nation’s highest court doesn’t need the posturing, grandstanding, mugging, and sensationalism that would surely accompany the presence of television. Kind of like what is seen these days in Senate confirmation hearings.

Jeffrey McCall (@Prof_McCall) is a professor of communication at DePauw University.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.