Specter to nudge Sotomayor on SCOTUS cameras

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday he plans to press Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to allow cameras inside the nation’s highest courtroom.

Specter, who is still a committee member although with less seniority since converting to the Democratic Party this year, told The Hill he is sending a letter to Sotomayor after personally raising the issue in a private meeting.

{mosads}“I hope to do it tomorrow, on the issue of televising the Supreme Court proceedings,” Specter said. “If I get it done, I’ll go to the (Senate) floor and talk about it… She’s the first one who I know has had experience with her courtroom being televised, so she’ll have some special insights.”

Specter would not reveal Sotomayor’s response, but noted that she once supervised a pilot program with cameras in her federal courtroom and that Justice John Paul Stevens is already on record supporting the idea.

Specter has long pushed to allow cameras inside the Supreme Court, and has even introduced legislation to force the issue. The push has been unsuccessful, but Specter noted that Sotomayor will be replacing Justice David Souter, who famously once said cameras would be allowed in the court “over my dead body.”

“Now he won’t be there,” Specter said. “The time may be right.”

As Judiciary Committee chairman, Specter held hearings on the issue in 2005, and in 2007 pushed through the committee a bill to force cameras inside the court. That bill won significant bipartisan support, including that of Republicans John Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general, and Charles Grassley of Iowa.

The Supreme Court releases transcripts of oral arguments, but has historically balked at allowing cameras, with some justices believing that it would prompt lawyers or even justices themselves to needlessly grandstand.

Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D), a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, said he supports Specter’s push and dismissed the idea that it would bog down proceedings.

“It would increase, over time, the quality of the argument before the court,” Whitehouse said. “The notion that people are going to come in there and take advantage of that particular podium to play to the national gallery doesn’t make any sense. That’s their fear, that it gets commercialized and politicized and public relations-ized. But you know, anybody who’s gotten to the Supreme Court as a lawyer knows that their real audience is those nine justices.”

Whitehouse acknowledged it will be an uphill battle to convince the court to go along with the idea, at least partly because some justices fear their own colleagues would grandstand as well.

“When you consider how much they travel and give speeches and have little empires of clerks, it’s hard to believe that’s going to get much worse,” Whitehouse said. “But if that’s their concern, that’s something they can do something about. It’s hard to believe they would want to throw the whole electronic public out of the courtroom just because their own colleagues can’t control themselves.”