Senate Ponders Cameras In High Court... Again

Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has teamed with Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) to introduce the Cameras in the Courtroom Act of 2011, the latest effort to get cameras in the Supreme Court.

The bill would require TV coverage of all open sessions of the Court unless the majority of justices decided that "doing so would constitute a violation of the due process rights of one or more of the parties before the Court." A similar bill was approved by the full Judiciary Committee in the last Congress. Sen Grassley has been pushing for opening up the high court to cameras for over a decade. He said at a hearing on the bill Tuesday in the Senate Subcommittee on Administration, Oversight and the Courts, that his push stemmed from the audio tapes of the Bush vs. Gore oral argument that were released after he and others pressed the court to broadcast the proceedings live. He said that was a sign of progress. He noted as further progress the court's decision last year to start releasing audiotapes regularly at the end of each week -- they had previously only been available at the end of each term. "But it is not enough," he told the committee. "I believe that the nature of our government and the fundamental principles upon which it was built require more."