[Crossposted from www.hiramhover.typepad.com]
The U.S. Supreme Court should stop publishing its decisions because doing so "misinforms" the public, Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declared in a rare interview this weekend.
The announcement followed Scalia's remarks in April, when he told an audience at the National Archives that televising oral arguments before the court would "misinform" the public.
"I wouldn't mind having the proceedings of the court, not just audioed, but televised, if I thought it would only go out on a channel that everyone would watch gavel to gavel," Scalia said. "But if you send it out on C-SPAN, what will happen is for every one person who sees it on C-SPAN gavel to gavel so they can really understand what the court is about, what the whole process is, 10,000 will see 15-second takeouts on the network news, which, I guarantee you, will be uncharacteristic of what the court does. So I have come to the conclusion that it will misinform the public rather than inform the public to have our proceedings televised."
More below the fold....
In his April remarks about televised proceedings, Scalia continued:
"It's, you know, news, entertainment and whatever -- they want 'man bites dog' stories. They don't want people to watch what the Supreme Court does over the course of a whole hour of argument. People aren't going to do that."
In advocating an end to the court's more than 200-year history of publishing its decisions, "I'm just following my own logic to its bold but obvious conclusion," Scalia announced.
"For every member of the public who reads our decisions from beginning to end, 10,000 people just hear the tidbits that the media reports," he said. "Rarely does a newspaper report contain more than a few phrases--at most 3 or 4 scattered sentences--from any court opinion. And that includes my own dissents."
"That's why the public misunderstands the greatness of my legal mind," Scalia insisted. "It's really all your fault."
The Constitution does not require publication of Supreme Court decisions, Scalia noted--in contrast to its explicit mandate that each house of Congress "shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same."
"The framers obviously intended to leave it to our discretion, and I think it's time we be a little more discrete," he said.
When a reporter asked how lower courts and lawyers could do their work if Supreme Court decisions were not published, a scowl crossed the associate justice's face.
"Activist judges aren't any more interested than reporters in the greatness of my legal mind," Scalia said. "I think that's obvious."
Update [2005-5-2 11:43:53 by Hprof]: This is satire! SATIRE!!
SATIRE!!!
Ack -- It astonishes me that this has to be pointed out: the idea of a Supreme Court justice suggesting that the court stop publishing its decisions is so patently ridiculous that it should be immediately recognized as satire, however good or bad.
Scalia really said the things in grey blockquotes about televising the court's proceedings; the rest I made up in a satirical attempt to follow his arguments to their logical conclusion, and to underscore his arrogance and condescension.