Television in the Supreme Court

SUPREME COURT
Chief justice vetoes idea of televised hearings
- Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 14, 2006

(07-14) 04:00 PDT HUNTINGTON BEACH, ORANGE COUNTY -- Chief Justice John Roberts poured cold water Thursday on suggestions to televise U.S. Supreme Court hearings, saying that keeping the proceedings free from outside distractions was more important than putting them on public display.

Advocates of television coverage had hoped that Roberts, the first Baby Boomer to head the nation's courts, would lobby his colleagues to drop their resistance to cameras, which are allowed in many state courts and some federal appeals courts. But when the subject was raised in a question-and-answer session at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' annual conference, he showed little inclination to disturb the status quo.

"There's a concern (among justices) about the impact of television on the functioning of the institution," Roberts said. "We're going to be very careful before we do anything that might have an adverse impact" on oral arguments.

One justice, David Souter, has said TV cameras would be admitted into the Supreme Court "over my dead body." Roberts did not express any such personal feelings, or go into detail on the ill effects of television coverage. But he said his fellow justices "see themselves as trustees of an institution that by and large functions well."

Roberts said he understands the argument that the public would benefit from seeing how the court works. He noted that the court has increasingly made audiotapes of arguments in major cases available to the media as soon as a hearing ends.

But, he added, "we don't have oral arguments to show the public how we function. We have them to learn about a particular case in a particular way."

His appearance came two weeks after the end of his first term on the court, a term that began with a string of unanimous decisions and talk of a new era of harmony but ended with the usual divided rulings in closely watched cases, on issues such as wetlands regulation and presidential powers. Still, the court showed more consensus than in most terms, voting unanimously in nearly half its cases.

"I think it promotes the rule of law to have the court speaking, to the extent possible, with one voice," Roberts said. For lower federal courts, such as the one on which he served before President Bush elevated him to the high court last fall, "it's much easier to figure out what the (Supreme) Court meant when they're speaking with one voice than when they're splintered," he said.

He twitted journalists for dramatizing the midterm split rulings.

After the early unanimous decisions, the most at the start of the court's term in the modern era, the court issued some divided opinions, and "I saw an article saying, 'So much for the vaunted unanimity,' " Roberts said.

"When (Joe) DiMaggio finally ended his hitting streak, sportswriters didn't say, 'He's all washed up.' "

The questions from a panel of two judges and a lawyer steered clear of sensitive topics, like the Supreme Court's frequent reversals of rulings by the more-liberal Ninth Circuit and Republican-sponsored legislation to split up the San Francisco-based circuit, the nation's largest appeals court.

The breakup plan, opposed by nearly all the circuit's judges, would put California and Hawaii in one new appeals court and Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska in another.

Chief Judge Mary Schroeder attacked the proposal in her State of the Circuit speech, saying it would be expensive and inefficient and would leave the new California-Hawaii circuit with an overwhelming workload and not enough judges.

Roberts was asked about one mildly controversial subject, his support of higher pay for federal judges. The chief justice makes about $202,900 a year -- far less than he earned as a top appellate lawyer in Washington, D.C. -- and his eight colleagues make $194,200.

At current salaries, "you no longer can draw the best trial lawyers, on a regular basis," to the federal bench, Roberts said. While no one becomes a judge to get rich, he said, the government "ought to pay them enough so they can educate their children and have a reasonable lifestyle."

"We don't want to get to the point where we have the judiciary staffed solely by people of independent means, or by people for whom the judicial pay scale is a raise," he said.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

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