Kozinski Letter Defends Court Cameras, Notes the Current Century
Updated: The U.S. Judicial Conference had a request for Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: Please “consider” conference policy barring broadcast of federal trials.
Apparently Kozinski thought the Judicial Conference should consider the century, the Legal Pad blog reports. The San Francisco-based judge wrote a letter to the Judicial Conference defending his circuit’s decision to allow cameras on a case-by-case basis for civil nonjury trials.
“Like it or not, we are now well into the 21st Century,” Kozinski wrote, according to the blog account. “It is up to those of us who lead the federal judiciary to adopt policies that are consistent with the spirit of the times and the advantages afforded us by new technology. If we do not, Congress will do it for us.”
The first case to be broadcast under the new experiment—a trial challenging California’s ban on gay marriage—began Monday without cameras. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the broadcast for two days, allowing the high court “further consideration” of the issue.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker had ruled the trial recordings could be posted on YouTube at the close of each day’s proceedings and could be broadcast in real time at other courthouses.
Kozinski had approved Walker’s proposal to broadcast the trial in 9th Circuit courthouses in Seattle; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Pasadena, Calif.; and the courthouse for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, N.Y., according to the 9th Circuit’s information officer, David Madden. He was still evaluating the proposal for YouTube broadcast when the Supreme Court stepped in.
Updated on Jan. 13 to include information from the 9th Circuit information officer and to clarify that Kozinski has not yet approved the YouTube broadcast.
