Speaker 1: The Supreme Court hasn't changed much since moving into its
Speaker 1: massive marvel marble building. The tables for the lawyers still
Speaker 1: have quill pens on them. The Chief Justice writes his
Speaker 1: opinions in Longhand, and cameras remained forbidden in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: So it was actually news when the Supreme Court announced
Speaker 1: recently it would require briefs to be filed electronically and
Speaker 1: it would make them available to everyone online. It was
Speaker 1: a step towards the kind of transparency that critics say
Speaker 1: is often lacking at the Court. Our guest is someone
Speaker 1: whose professional mission is to make the Court more open
Speaker 1: and accountable. He's Gabe Roth, the executive director of the
Speaker 1: group Fixed the Court. Gabe, thanks for joining us. I
Speaker 1: want to start by playing a clip of something Chief
Speaker 1: Justice John Roberts said in we are the most transparent
Speaker 1: branch of government. Um. Everything we do that has an
Speaker 1: impact is done in public. Gave. His point was at
Speaker 1: the Court's most important Really, it's only important output are
Speaker 1: its visions, and those are things where they include the reasoning.
Speaker 1: They put those out in the public. Uh So is
Speaker 1: a Chief Justice right that the Court is actually the
Speaker 1: most transparent branch of the government. He's not greg he's
Speaker 1: not at all the Court. While its opinions maybe posted
Speaker 1: online and distributed within minutes of them being handed down
Speaker 1: from the bench, the fact remains that if you are
Speaker 1: a public official in seventeen there are certain responsibilities that
Speaker 1: you have to the public. Doesn't matter if you're a
Speaker 1: life tenure like the justices are not. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you can't experience the cases of the court live
Speaker 1: unless you're one of the lucky few who gets into
Speaker 1: the courtroom on argument day, you don't know very much
Speaker 1: about their travel, their stock ownership, their potential conflicts of interest.
Speaker 1: It's not like the justices overall are in trouble, it's
Speaker 1: not like they're they're unethical people. But if you are
Speaker 1: going to have a life tenure position in the federal government,
Speaker 1: there should be a little modicum of transparency in terms
Speaker 1: of the way the stitution works and the outside activities
Speaker 1: of the individuals who are part of that institution. With
Speaker 1: with all that being said, does the Court get some
Speaker 1: credit in your mind for this this new step with
Speaker 1: regard to electronic filing and making uh they say they
Speaker 1: will make essentially every brief that has filed with them
Speaker 1: available to the public online. Absolutely, they they credit work,
Speaker 1: credit is due. They've Chief Justice Roberts said that this
Speaker 1: was going to happen within the next year or two.
Speaker 1: I guess it took a little longer to work out
Speaker 1: the kinks, and there's there's still a few kinks on
Speaker 1: the on the website. UH. In addition to the filing,
Speaker 1: the website was was remade within the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, they absolutely get credit for this. I mean,
Speaker 1: every other federal appeals court in the country has been
Speaker 1: doing this for years. Most state courts have been doing
Speaker 1: this for years. But there's as as the court likes
Speaker 1: to say, there are reasons that they're the architecture one
Speaker 1: of the architectural features of the building is turtles. The
Speaker 1: court moves slowly of jurisprudentially and on trans parrency issues. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm young and I'm patient. I'm gonna keep pushing
Speaker 1: them to, uh to to to become more transparent across
Speaker 1: the board. But yes, they do. They do get credit
Speaker 1: for doing something that they should have done a decade ago.
Speaker 1: So I want to move to the subject that's that's
Speaker 1: always a big one, which is UH television cameras, which
Speaker 1: of course, are are forbidden in the Supreme Court. You
Speaker 1: can bring still camera in there. Um. Nominees when they
Speaker 1: get nominated to the Court tend to express at least
Speaker 1: some openness to the idea of of cameras there. And
Speaker 1: now Neil Gorsich was perhaps less open than some previous
Speaker 1: nominees were. And then they joined the court um and
Speaker 1: they seem a little less open to it. Um. Is
Speaker 1: there some reason you think that happens That maybe speaks
Speaker 1: to the notion that maybe once they get there, they
Speaker 1: actually realize there are some downsides to having cameras there.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't necessarily buy that argument
Speaker 1: about becoming a member of the court and then changing
Speaker 1: the mind. I think it really has to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a fairly stark generational split
Speaker 1: at the Court. Some of the justices were born You
Speaker 1: think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, uh Stephen Bryer,
Speaker 1: and also the late Justice la Some of them were
Speaker 1: born in the thirties, so they were growing up. They
Speaker 1: were not having the ubiquity of television as someone like
Speaker 1: you or I or anyone born after has and and
Speaker 1: and as justice has become younger overall, to get more
Speaker 1: used to the idea that, uh, if you're in public service,
Speaker 1: if if you're a public figure, to use a legal term,
Speaker 1: if you're a public figure, there's not the expectation, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is the expectation that you're going to be filmed
Speaker 1: on a fairly regular basis. So I think it's there
Speaker 1: are a few holdout to maybe you're part of the
Speaker 1: older generation. But I think that within a few years,
Speaker 1: once the generational generations have turned on the Court, that
Speaker 1: that will get will get cameras more importantly that we
Speaker 1: it's it's more immediacy that we're after. If if live
Speaker 1: you know, the Supreme Court we learned in the last
Speaker 1: year has the capability of allowing live audio from the courtroom.
Speaker 1: They live audio broadcast a Scalia memorial, so it's less
Speaker 1: you know, look, it's about the the visuals. But but
Speaker 1: to me, as as a former journalist, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: more about the immediacy, about ensuring that the oral arguments
Speaker 1: of the sixty or seventy cases that the Court heres
Speaker 1: each year is capable in real time for the evening
Speaker 1: news or the afternoon news. Um in the most modern
Speaker 1: way possible, and that's audio live streaming, and then hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll get cameras a few years after that. Gabe, I
Speaker 1: want to play for you something else that that John
Speaker 1: Roberts said about the idea of televising Supreme Court arguments. Um,
Speaker 1: actually just do that. Do that in just a second.
Speaker 1: Let me first ask you, Um, other than cameras, if
Speaker 1: there's one other thing you could you would want the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court to do to become more transparent, what would
Speaker 1: you pick? I think it would be stock ownership. Only
Speaker 1: three of the current justices own individual stocks and stocks
Speaker 1: and individual companies. Uh, whether it be Cisco or Felled
Speaker 1: both ways actually um or HP or uh Uh. Johnson
Speaker 1: controls the only Briar, Aldo and Roberts owned stocks and
Speaker 1: individual companies. And the reasons are Roberts invested when he
Speaker 1: was at law partner. Briar and his wife were active
Speaker 1: investors in the past. Aldo's father in law bequeathed a
Speaker 1: bunch of stocks to him when he passed away. But
Speaker 1: there's no reason that they should these three contrary to
Speaker 1: the other six, or owning individual stocks because there's so
Speaker 1: many cases. We have such a litigious society. Seven thousand
Speaker 1: petitions come to the Supreme Court every year, and we
Speaker 1: don't want these unnecessary recusals caused by having these individual stocks.
Speaker 1: That Justice is should instead own blended funds or mutual
Speaker 1: funds like there, like there the other six counterparts, and
Speaker 1: instead should divest from individual stocks from the time that
Speaker 1: they're on the bench in order to reduce the amount
Speaker 1: for potential conflicts of interest. Let me go ahead and
Speaker 1: play that clip from John Roberts talking about why he's
Speaker 1: opposed to televising Supreme Court arguments. People say, you know,
Speaker 1: everything other government institutions have been opened up, but be
Speaker 1: interesting to know what governmental institutions people saying function better
Speaker 1: now that they're on television. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: About a minute left, which you know, it's I think
Speaker 1: it's an apples to oranges comparison. You think of Congress
Speaker 1: on c SPAN. They're using those clips and their charts
Speaker 1: to run for office, to run for re election, to
Speaker 1: to sort of denigrate the other, the other party. A
Speaker 1: lot of times the justices don't don't do that. They have,
Speaker 1: you know, for better or worse, they have life tenure
Speaker 1: and the the idea that anything which I mean, you know, empirically,
Speaker 1: we know when cameras are used in appellate courts the
Speaker 1: world over, from the Supreme Court of Ohio to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court of Brazil. Nothing changes all that from the
Speaker 1: quality of the argument and the quality of what happens legally.
Speaker 1: All that changes is that the American people are the
Speaker 1: people who are not able to make it to the
Speaker 1: courtroom are able to understand their government better. And I
Speaker 1: think there's no better time than now, when where there's
Speaker 1: a clearly a civic deficit in this country, to have
Speaker 1: the citizens of this country understand what's going on at
Speaker 1: the top court in the land. I want to thank
Speaker 1: our guest Gave Broth, executive director of Fix the Court.
Speaker 1: That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow thanks to our technic Wold director Chris Try
Speaker 1: Call Me and our producer David Sutterman. Coming up on
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