Court Case Transcript - US Supreme Court Takes Lead

Court case transcript access via the Internet gained its most powerful advocate in the US Supreme Court. Beginning October 2006, the high court will give the public access to transcripts of proceedings within the same day. Before this, transcript release occurred with a couple of weeks' delay.

The American public – and anyone in the world with Internet access – will be able to view specific oral debates through court transcripts posted on the Supreme Court website effective October 2006.

The move was seen by many as a step in the direction of TV or radio coverage of the proceedings that were once shrouded in a certain shroud of inaccessibility. This open policy is characteristic of many judicial measures of late, such as putting everything from dockets to rulings, to even personal data, online.

Before this, oral debates were posted only on media or university websites, some even with audio. American law aficionados, however, feel that merely putting transcripts of such an influential part of US policy and history as the Supreme Court is a poor alternative to actual audio (or even video) coverage.

The previous Supreme Court once gave into public clamor for real time coverage when it broadcast audio of the 2000 Florida presidential race debates. Incumbent Justices who have given their comments generally approve of this more open policy.

Court Case Transcript Access is Here to Stay

Court case transcript access for high court proceedings have gained so many advocates that we are likely to see this open policy replicated in the lower courts.

And the availability of WHOLE transcripts has many advocates. Perhaps the most quotable Justice, Antonin Scalia, for example, cautioned against sporadic coverage, especially when it comes to featuring takeouts in network news programs.

He warns that for every individual who watches the entire proceedings on C-SPAN to be able to get a complete picture of the high court, there will be thousands who will catch a few seconds of it on the news, which Scalia guarantees will be misleading.

Scalia concludes that partial broadcasts will, therefore, only misinform people instead of making them more knowledgeable about how the Supreme Court works.

Open policy advocates have, for many years, asked the Supreme Court to speed up court case transcript release, which have been documented via audiotapes of actual proceedings as far back as ca. 1950.

Advocates see no reason not to make proceedings remotely accessible since, they reason, the White House routinely makes transcripts of the President's statements, as well as those of other officials, available to the media almost as soon as they are made.

Still, there IS something to be said about completeness right? A court transcript posted today does not encompass the whole court proceedings. And if you are looking for the ‘whole picture’, then it’s better to get all related court records instead of trying to ‘piece them together’ from what you see online.

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