107 Reading: The Courts in the Information Age
Learning Objectives
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- How do Supreme Court justices interact with the media?
- How do reporters go about covering the Supreme Court?
- How are the Supreme Court and its decisions depicted in the information age?
- What are the consequences of these depictions?
Media Interactions
Occasionally, Supreme Court justices give speeches about broad constitutional issues, talk off the record with a journalist, or rarely, engage in an on-the-record interview. An exception was Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who, in 1986, engaged in sixty hours of candid interviews with reporter Stephen Wermiel and allowed him to go through his papers. The agreement was that, after Brennan retired, the reporter would write his biography. Brennan retired in 1990. The book finally appeared in 2010: Sol Stern and Stephen Wermiel, Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). They may write a book setting forth their judicial philosophies and go on television to publicize it.[1] Justice Stephen Breyer appeared on Larry King Live to promote his latest book. He was circumspect, carefully avoiding discussing cases in any detail or revealing the Court’s deliberations.[2]
The more flamboyant Justice Antonin Scalia has appeared on 60 Minutes to promote a book he coauthored on how to persuade judges. During the interview, he did discuss some of his views.[3] Also, he does not shy away from voicing controversial opinions in statements and speeches, saying, for example, “you would have to be an idiot” to believe that the Constitution is a living document. Justice Scalia appeared on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) panel on the state of civil liberties televised by C-SPAN (October 15, 2006), explaining and defending some of his decisions. (Watch the Scalia interview online.) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in a speech that could be seen as a response and that was posted on the Court’s website, expressed her preference for “dynamic” over “static, frozen-in-time constitutional interpretation.”[4]
Withal, most judges shun the media. They rarely hold press conferences or discuss current cases.[5] Toni House, who served as the Supreme Court’s public information officer for many years, described her job as “peculiar in Washington because this office doesn’t spin, it doesn’t flap, it doesn’t interpret . . . When an opinion comes down, we put it in the hands of a reporter.”[6] Nowadays, the court does frequently release audio of the oral arguments.
The main way in which justices communicate with the media is through the legal language of their written opinions. Even when a case is controversial and the Supreme Court is divided 5–4, the justices use such language in their opinions to justify their decisions. No matter how impassioned, this legal language makes it difficult for reporters to raise the subjects of partisanship or politi