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: Lawbeat

Mauro: Flogging books isn't enough

By Mark Obbie

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Legal Times' Tony Mauro uses this USA Today op-ed piece today to chide the Supreme Court for its secretive ways. He pegs this perennial lament to Justice Antonin Scalia's scheduled appearance on Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes." Mauro admits that when a justice takes to the airwaves to promote a book, the public gains -- but not as much as if the Court were more systematic about its transparency and accountability. And he's not just talking about cameras in the court when he declares, "It should not get to decide how invisible, how unaccountable, it will be." Mauro points to other courts' innovations in connecting to the public, and closes with this:

When Justice David Souter joined the Supreme Court in 1990, the reporters who cover the court greeted him, as we do with all new justices, with a gathering in the court's press room. After an hour or so, as Souter inched his way toward the door, he turned and told us, "This was fun. Let's do it again when I retire."His wry remark was a sad reminder that we see a lot of the justices when they are nominated and again when they leave the court. But in between, when they are doing the public's business, they drop out of sight -- unless they have a book to sell. In a democracy dependent on an informed public, that's no way for its nine most important judges to operate.

Mauro told the same story when he spoke here at Syracuse University in our series on law, politics, and media (scroll down that page for a video of Mauro's talk). Now that we're nearly three terms into the Roberts Court with too few gains to show in Court-press relations, it's depressing -- no, outrageous -- to think that an 18-year-old anecdote will continue to ring true for the foreseeable future.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).