Professor Nancy Marder was quoted in a Feb. 18th New York Times story on video coverage in the Supreme Court (“Bucking a Trend, Supreme Court Justices Reject Video Coverage” by Adam Liptak). The article notes the fact that, “in the United States, cameras are commonplace in state trial and appeals courts, and the lower federal courts have experimented with them. Only in the Supreme Court is there categorical resistance.” In other countries, the reverse is often true: for example, Canada’s Supreme Court utilizes cameras to broadcast its arguments, but the Canadian trial courts have mostly disallowed the use of cameras in their hearings.
The story cited Professor Marder’s recent article, The Conundrum of Cameras in the Courtroom (44 Ariz. St. L.J. 1489 (2013)), as an example of recent law scholarship seeking “to make sense of the gaps between the American and international approaches” to having cameras in the courtoom. Professor Marder said that “most countries do not allow cameras in their courtrooms” and that “cameras in federal courtrooms will do more harm than good at this time.” She also voiced her concern about our video-centric culture, in which “everything becomes entertainment, focusing on the gaffe.”
Read the rest of the story here or download Professor Marder’s article from SSRN here.
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