C-SPAN televises a great number of congressional hearings and other political shenanigans but they do not broadcast Supreme Court hearings. A number of people have been advocating that Supreme Court hearings also be televised on C-SPAN and I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortuneatly these things aren’t up to me and some opponents believe televising these hearings will have negative side effects:
Senators from both parties have been pushing for decades to allow cameras into the Supreme Court’s chambers. But many of the justices fear their dense, aggressive questioning would be taken out of context, and that cameras would foster the public grandstanding often seen in Congress and the executive branch.
First of all this is bullshit. Why would the justices change the way they do their hearings? Who cares if anything they say is taken out of context? Claims that adding cameras will foster public grandstanding is also stupid because people already grandstand in the Supreme Court, just read through some of the rulings.
I think the Supreme Courts wants to keep its hearings as secret as possible because they don’t want to be caught doing anything naughty. The history of the Supreme Court as a defender of the Constitution (their job) is not very voluminous, they mostly work to advance the statist agenda. Were their hearings televised people would be able to see this and criticize their attempts to gain the government further control.
Many people believe the separation of powers in our government help protect us from tyranny. Unfortunately for us this isn’t the case because all three branches of our government work together to further empower themselves. Even though they each compose separate divisions they realize that they’re all in the game together and what grants additional power to on branch very likely grants additional power to the other two branches as well.
The ongoings of our government as supposed to be transparent because ultimately the government can only govern an overall consenting population. We the people are supposed to be the final judges of government action and that can only be properly accomplished if we know everything they’re doing. Members of our government also know this and thus fight tooth and nail against every attempt to further pull back the curtan concealing their doings.
We need to televise Supreme Court hearings because not doing so forces us to rely on the transcripts provided to use by government employees. I don’t trust any government employee to be honest or keep me property informed.