Friday, April 21, 2017

Cameras & dogs @ SCOTUS?

Justice Alito Still Says No to Video Cameras at High Court, reports Law360, covering his comments made at the 3d Circuit's annual conference. Why? Because he thinks "it would change the nature of oral argument -- I have no doubt about it, whatsoever -- in the big cases." (Are there any other kinds of cases at SCOTUS?) He then cited an example of how C-SPAN used (or misused?) audio from the ACA arguments, which were then followed by a political commercial referencing the 'weakness' of the arguments. Justice Alito fears that this would happen regularly: "people would be producing sound bites or quirky little things that happened and would be immediately on cable news." "The value of oral arguments in the decision-making process would be diminished."

Justice Alito also discussed his late springer spaniel, Zeus.“I would put the red brief over here, and the blue brief over there, equal distance from Zeus. I would put a couple dog treats on both, and then I would let Zeus go. If he went to the blue brief, then we would reverse, and if he went to the red brief, then we would affirm.”