1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,160
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court hasn't changed much since moving into its

2
00:00:03,360 --> 00:00:08,039
Speaker 1: massive marvel marble building. The tables for the lawyers still

3
00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:10,719
Speaker 1: have quill pens on them. The Chief Justice writes his

4
00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:14,560
Speaker 1: opinions in Longhand, and cameras remained forbidden in the courtroom.

5
00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:17,640
Speaker 1: So it was actually news when the Supreme Court announced

6
00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:20,880
Speaker 1: recently it would require briefs to be filed electronically and

7
00:00:20,920 --> 00:00:24,680
Speaker 1: it would make them available to everyone online. It was

8
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:27,680
Speaker 1: a step towards the kind of transparency that critics say

9
00:00:27,920 --> 00:00:30,920
Speaker 1: is often lacking at the Court. Our guest is someone

10
00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:33,160
Speaker 1: whose professional mission is to make the Court more open

11
00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:36,320
Speaker 1: and accountable. He's Gabe Roth, the executive director of the

12
00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:39,479
Speaker 1: group Fixed the Court. Gabe, thanks for joining us. I

13
00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:42,600
Speaker 1: want to start by playing a clip of something Chief

14
00:00:42,640 --> 00:00:47,520
Speaker 1: Justice John Roberts said in we are the most transparent

15
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:50,680
Speaker 1: branch of government. Um. Everything we do that has an

16
00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:55,000
Speaker 1: impact is done in public. Gave. His point was at

17
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,360
Speaker 1: the Court's most important Really, it's only important output are

18
00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:02,240
Speaker 1: its visions, and those are things where they include the reasoning.

19
00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:05,440
Speaker 1: They put those out in the public. Uh So is

20
00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:07,760
Speaker 1: a Chief Justice right that the Court is actually the

21
00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:11,440
Speaker 1: most transparent branch of the government. He's not greg he's

22
00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:15,360
Speaker 1: not at all the Court. While its opinions maybe posted

23
00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:20,479
Speaker 1: online and distributed within minutes of them being handed down

24
00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:23,040
Speaker 1: from the bench, the fact remains that if you are

25
00:01:23,080 --> 00:01:27,039
Speaker 1: a public official in seventeen there are certain responsibilities that

26
00:01:27,080 --> 00:01:28,920
Speaker 1: you have to the public. Doesn't matter if you're a

27
00:01:28,959 --> 00:01:32,559
Speaker 1: life tenure like the justices are not. And the fact

28
00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:37,080
Speaker 1: that you can't experience the cases of the court live

29
00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:39,520
Speaker 1: unless you're one of the lucky few who gets into

30
00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:41,800
Speaker 1: the courtroom on argument day, you don't know very much

31
00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:45,679
Speaker 1: about their travel, their stock ownership, their potential conflicts of interest.

32
00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:50,000
Speaker 1: It's not like the justices overall are in trouble, it's

33
00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:53,320
Speaker 1: not like they're they're unethical people. But if you are

34
00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:55,840
Speaker 1: going to have a life tenure position in the federal government,

35
00:01:55,880 --> 00:01:59,320
Speaker 1: there should be a little modicum of transparency in terms

36
00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:02,560
Speaker 1: of the way the stitution works and the outside activities

37
00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:06,600
Speaker 1: of the individuals who are part of that institution. With

38
00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:09,359
Speaker 1: with all that being said, does the Court get some

39
00:02:09,480 --> 00:02:12,040
Speaker 1: credit in your mind for this this new step with

40
00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:15,960
Speaker 1: regard to electronic filing and making uh they say they

41
00:02:15,960 --> 00:02:18,960
Speaker 1: will make essentially every brief that has filed with them

42
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,160
Speaker 1: available to the public online. Absolutely, they they credit work,

43
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:26,960
Speaker 1: credit is due. They've Chief Justice Roberts said that this

44
00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:28,480
Speaker 1: was going to happen within the next year or two.

45
00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:30,560
Speaker 1: I guess it took a little longer to work out

46
00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:32,320
Speaker 1: the kinks, and there's there's still a few kinks on

47
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:35,400
Speaker 1: the on the website. UH. In addition to the filing,

48
00:02:35,520 --> 00:02:38,760
Speaker 1: the website was was remade within the last few weeks.

49
00:02:38,880 --> 00:02:41,280
Speaker 1: So so yeah, they absolutely get credit for this. I mean,

50
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,079
Speaker 1: every other federal appeals court in the country has been

51
00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:46,680
Speaker 1: doing this for years. Most state courts have been doing

52
00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:50,480
Speaker 1: this for years. But there's as as the court likes

53
00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:54,240
Speaker 1: to say, there are reasons that they're the architecture one

54
00:02:54,240 --> 00:02:56,320
Speaker 1: of the architectural features of the building is turtles. The

55
00:02:56,480 --> 00:03:01,919
Speaker 1: court moves slowly of jurisprudentially and on trans parrency issues. Um,

56
00:03:01,960 --> 00:03:03,840
Speaker 1: but I'm young and I'm patient. I'm gonna keep pushing

57
00:03:03,919 --> 00:03:07,440
Speaker 1: them to, uh to to to become more transparent across

58
00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:09,320
Speaker 1: the board. But yes, they do. They do get credit

59
00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:11,200
Speaker 1: for doing something that they should have done a decade ago.

60
00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:14,280
Speaker 1: So I want to move to the subject that's that's

61
00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:17,600
Speaker 1: always a big one, which is UH television cameras, which

62
00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:19,519
Speaker 1: of course, are are forbidden in the Supreme Court. You

63
00:03:19,520 --> 00:03:23,800
Speaker 1: can bring still camera in there. Um. Nominees when they

64
00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:26,760
Speaker 1: get nominated to the Court tend to express at least

65
00:03:26,760 --> 00:03:29,440
Speaker 1: some openness to the idea of of cameras there. And

66
00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:32,160
Speaker 1: now Neil Gorsich was perhaps less open than some previous

67
00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:36,480
Speaker 1: nominees were. And then they joined the court um and

68
00:03:37,280 --> 00:03:40,440
Speaker 1: they seem a little less open to it. Um. Is

69
00:03:40,480 --> 00:03:43,760
Speaker 1: there some reason you think that happens That maybe speaks

70
00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:45,880
Speaker 1: to the notion that maybe once they get there, they

71
00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:50,320
Speaker 1: actually realize there are some downsides to having cameras there.

72
00:03:50,480 --> 00:03:53,840
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't necessarily buy that argument

73
00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,480
Speaker 1: about becoming a member of the court and then changing

74
00:03:56,520 --> 00:03:58,040
Speaker 1: the mind. I think it really has to do with

75
00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:02,600
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a fairly stark generational split

76
00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 1: at the Court. Some of the justices were born You

77
00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:09,920
Speaker 1: think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, uh Stephen Bryer,

78
00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:11,880
Speaker 1: and also the late Justice la Some of them were

79
00:04:11,880 --> 00:04:13,680
Speaker 1: born in the thirties, so they were growing up. They

80
00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:17,440
Speaker 1: were not having the ubiquity of television as someone like

81
00:04:17,520 --> 00:04:22,000
Speaker 1: you or I or anyone born after has and and

82
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:25,480
Speaker 1: and as justice has become younger overall, to get more

83
00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:29,760
Speaker 1: used to the idea that, uh, if you're in public service,

84
00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:33,440
Speaker 1: if if you're a public figure, to use a legal term,

85
00:04:33,440 --> 00:04:36,560
Speaker 1: if you're a public figure, there's not the expectation, I mean,

86
00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:38,800
Speaker 1: there is the expectation that you're going to be filmed

87
00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:40,680
Speaker 1: on a fairly regular basis. So I think it's there

88
00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:42,839
Speaker 1: are a few holdout to maybe you're part of the

89
00:04:42,839 --> 00:04:45,479
Speaker 1: older generation. But I think that within a few years,

90
00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:49,120
Speaker 1: once the generational generations have turned on the Court, that

91
00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:51,279
Speaker 1: that will get will get cameras more importantly that we

92
00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:53,640
Speaker 1: it's it's more immediacy that we're after. If if live

93
00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:56,040
Speaker 1: you know, the Supreme Court we learned in the last

94
00:04:56,080 --> 00:05:00,960
Speaker 1: year has the capability of allowing live audio from the courtroom.

95
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:05,279
Speaker 1: They live audio broadcast a Scalia memorial, so it's less

96
00:05:05,320 --> 00:05:08,640
Speaker 1: you know, look, it's about the the visuals. But but

97
00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:11,680
Speaker 1: to me, as as a former journalist, it's it's it's

98
00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:16,200
Speaker 1: more about the immediacy, about ensuring that the oral arguments

99
00:05:16,200 --> 00:05:18,800
Speaker 1: of the sixty or seventy cases that the Court heres

100
00:05:18,839 --> 00:05:21,920
Speaker 1: each year is capable in real time for the evening

101
00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:25,520
Speaker 1: news or the afternoon news. Um in the most modern

102
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:28,720
Speaker 1: way possible, and that's audio live streaming, and then hopefully

103
00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:31,360
Speaker 1: we'll get cameras a few years after that. Gabe, I

104
00:05:31,400 --> 00:05:35,000
Speaker 1: want to play for you something else that that John

105
00:05:35,080 --> 00:05:38,720
Speaker 1: Roberts said about the idea of televising Supreme Court arguments. Um,

106
00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:40,719
Speaker 1: actually just do that. Do that in just a second.

107
00:05:40,800 --> 00:05:44,520
Speaker 1: Let me first ask you, Um, other than cameras, if

108
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:46,240
Speaker 1: there's one other thing you could you would want the

109
00:05:46,279 --> 00:05:49,040
Speaker 1: Supreme Court to do to become more transparent, what would

110
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:52,480
Speaker 1: you pick? I think it would be stock ownership. Only

111
00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:55,960
Speaker 1: three of the current justices own individual stocks and stocks

112
00:05:55,960 --> 00:06:00,200
Speaker 1: and individual companies. Uh, whether it be Cisco or Felled

113
00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:05,640
Speaker 1: both ways actually um or HP or uh Uh. Johnson

114
00:06:05,680 --> 00:06:09,080
Speaker 1: controls the only Briar, Aldo and Roberts owned stocks and

115
00:06:09,160 --> 00:06:12,200
Speaker 1: individual companies. And the reasons are Roberts invested when he

116
00:06:12,240 --> 00:06:15,600
Speaker 1: was at law partner. Briar and his wife were active

117
00:06:15,640 --> 00:06:18,760
Speaker 1: investors in the past. Aldo's father in law bequeathed a

118
00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:20,919
Speaker 1: bunch of stocks to him when he passed away. But

119
00:06:20,960 --> 00:06:23,720
Speaker 1: there's no reason that they should these three contrary to

120
00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:26,000
Speaker 1: the other six, or owning individual stocks because there's so

121
00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:28,400
Speaker 1: many cases. We have such a litigious society. Seven thousand

122
00:06:28,480 --> 00:06:30,719
Speaker 1: petitions come to the Supreme Court every year, and we

123
00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:35,040
Speaker 1: don't want these unnecessary recusals caused by having these individual stocks.

124
00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:38,480
Speaker 1: That Justice is should instead own blended funds or mutual

125
00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:41,520
Speaker 1: funds like there, like there the other six counterparts, and

126
00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:44,159
Speaker 1: instead should divest from individual stocks from the time that

127
00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:46,760
Speaker 1: they're on the bench in order to reduce the amount

128
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:49,600
Speaker 1: for potential conflicts of interest. Let me go ahead and

129
00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,120
Speaker 1: play that clip from John Roberts talking about why he's

130
00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:55,800
Speaker 1: opposed to televising Supreme Court arguments. People say, you know,

131
00:06:55,880 --> 00:07:01,359
Speaker 1: everything other government institutions have been opened up, but be

132
00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:05,080
Speaker 1: interesting to know what governmental institutions people saying function better

133
00:07:05,560 --> 00:07:08,880
Speaker 1: now that they're on television. What do you think about that?

134
00:07:08,960 --> 00:07:12,280
Speaker 1: About a minute left, which you know, it's I think

135
00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:14,679
Speaker 1: it's an apples to oranges comparison. You think of Congress

136
00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:17,000
Speaker 1: on c SPAN. They're using those clips and their charts

137
00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:19,720
Speaker 1: to run for office, to run for re election, to

138
00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:22,160
Speaker 1: to sort of denigrate the other, the other party. A

139
00:07:22,160 --> 00:07:24,720
Speaker 1: lot of times the justices don't don't do that. They have,

140
00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:26,800
Speaker 1: you know, for better or worse, they have life tenure

141
00:07:27,240 --> 00:07:30,800
Speaker 1: and the the idea that anything which I mean, you know, empirically,

142
00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:34,200
Speaker 1: we know when cameras are used in appellate courts the

143
00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:36,320
Speaker 1: world over, from the Supreme Court of Ohio to the

144
00:07:36,320 --> 00:07:39,600
Speaker 1: Supreme Court of Brazil. Nothing changes all that from the

145
00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:42,360
Speaker 1: quality of the argument and the quality of what happens legally.

146
00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:45,200
Speaker 1: All that changes is that the American people are the

147
00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:47,000
Speaker 1: people who are not able to make it to the

148
00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:49,520
Speaker 1: courtroom are able to understand their government better. And I

149
00:07:49,520 --> 00:07:51,800
Speaker 1: think there's no better time than now, when where there's

150
00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,240
Speaker 1: a clearly a civic deficit in this country, to have

151
00:07:55,160 --> 00:07:57,560
Speaker 1: the citizens of this country understand what's going on at

152
00:07:57,600 --> 00:07:59,320
Speaker 1: the top court in the land. I want to thank

153
00:07:59,320 --> 00:08:02,080
Speaker 1: our guest Gave Broth, executive director of Fix the Court.

154
00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:04,520
Speaker 1: That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be

155
00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:07,320
Speaker 1: back tomorrow thanks to our technic Wold director Chris Try

156
00:08:07,360 --> 00:08:10,040
Speaker 1: Call Me and our producer David Sutterman. Coming up on

157
00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:14,840
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio Bloomberg Markets with Corey Johnson. Stay tuned for

158
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:19,080
Speaker 1: that and more here on Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg