Continued: Editorial: Courtroom cameras in a YouTube age

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"The order for the pilot project [on cameras in state courtrooms] includes a requirement for a study to determine the impact on witnesses and parties that cameras may have, something I know many prosecutors, defense lawyers and victims advocates are concerned about. We do not know where that pilot will lead us, but we are taking the right step in at least exploring a new direction."

Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson

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Courtroom dramas have been a television staple since "Perry Mason." But for Americans who are seeking information, not entertainment, about the workings of the third branch of government, TV screenplays are no substitute for the real thing.

That opportunity is lacking in most instances in Minnesota trial courts. In fact, this state ranks among the 15 most restrictive in the country in courtroom video access. Most states allow appellate court proceedings to be televised. But the pacesetter for all judicial matters in the country, the U.S. Supreme Court, remains reluctant to broadcast all of its approximately 75 hour-long oral argument sessions per year. It has released audio recordings of selected cases on request by the government affairs cable channel C-SPAN since 2000, but has refused to permit cameras in its courtroom.

In the YouTube age, that bar to judicial transparency is obsolescent. Arguments are still mounted that the presence of video cameras would alter behavior, stifle candor and ultimately distort the administration of justice in courtrooms. But those arguments presume in trial participants a self-consciousness in the presence of cameras that is much reduced today, when cameras are almost as ubiquitous as cell phones. (In fact, in many cases, they are cell phones.)

This newspaper has long been an advocate of opening most courtrooms, at every level, to video broadcasting. We welcome recent word from two quarters about new support for efforts to crack the old bar to public scrutiny of the courts via video cameras.

• In Minnesota, as part of his June 26 "state of the judiciary" message, Chief Justice Eric Magnuson made positive mention of a pilot project, currently in the design phase, that will test what happens when a camera is present at trial. While Magnuson stopped short of a ringing endorsement of the idea, his openness is significant.

"The court system in the years ahead must be more accessible than ever for our citizens," Magnuson said. That view recognizes the reality that the courts do the public's business, and the public increasingly expects its business to be available in video, audio and print formats, on demand on the web.

• U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., announced his intention to make broadcast coverage of Supreme Court oral arguments a topic in the nomination hearings for justice-designee Sonia Sotomayor. The justice whose seat she would fill, David Souter, was an outspoken opponent of TV coverage. Specter said that Souter's retirement presents an opportunity to reconsider the issue.

In so doing, he's likely to have an ally in Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The former Hennepin County chief prosecutor said that while she has some qualms about televising trial court proceedings, she believes all appellate courts, including the highest one in the land, should welcome cameras.

In a letter to Sotomayor, Specter quoted the man who was president 100 years ago, William Howard Taft, who went on to serve as chief justice. "Nothing tends more to render judges careful in their decision and anxiously solicitous to do exact justice than the consciousness that every act of theirs is subject to the intelligent scrutiny of their fellow men and to candid criticism." As a branch of democratic government, the courts have an obligation to make themselves available for scrutiny. The more they do so, the better the chance that the people's inevitable "candid criticism" will also be intelligent.

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