Senator Blumenthal questioning Justice Antonin Scalia & Justice Stephen Breyer

thank you Thank You mr. chairman thank you for having this hearing Thank You Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia for spending so much time with us and having so much patience with our questions before coming here and as you may know I'm one of the more junior senators I was Attorney General of the state of Connecticut didn't have the honor of knowing mr. rude for about 20 years and the highlight of those 20 years was the cases that I argued before your court so I have been waiting for the day this is payback when I could when I could interrupt you as merciless oh yes you did not mean and give you as hard a time but fortunately in those cases I think there were four and all that I argued you decided the right way so I'm going to avoid the temptation but I was very impressed and and moved by your explanation as to why you think it is so important for the public to understand and appreciate what judging is and what role it plays in our system and I agree with you totally that not only is there the need but there now is the lack really of that understanding and so I guess I say as not only one who's argued but also as a former law clerk who sat through a year of arguments and learned so much about the system in that process why not open it to video recordings why not in the federal courts give the public the benefit of seeing it firsthand in your court and other federal courts and so appreciate really the the quality as well as the diversity and extraordinarily often excruciating difficulty of what you do I'll start senator when I first came on the court I was in favor of your just talking about televising the arguments right correct not the conference you know though the Brazilian Supreme Court they televise their conference I would never I would never assume or think of it nor would I uh I was initially in favor of televising but the longer I've been there the less good idea I think it is now the justification usually put forward is we want to educate the American people about what the court is and what not now if I really thought the American people would get educated I'd be all for it if and if they sat through a days of our proceedings gavel-to-gavel boy would it teach them a lot they would learn that we're not most of the time looking up at the sky and saying should there be a right to this or that they were doing real law the Bankruptcy Code the Internal Revenue revenue code people would never again come up to me and ask as they sometimes do Justice Scalia why do you have to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court the Constitution doesn't say so no of course it doesn't but 99% of what we do is law it's stuff that only lawyers can do and and if the people would learn that it would be a great piece of Education but for every ten people who set through our proceedings gavel-to-gavel there would be ten thousand who would see nothing but a 30-second take out from one of the proceedings which I guarantee you would not be representative of what we do so they would would in effect be given a misimpression of the Supreme Court I am very sure that that would be the consequence and therefore I'm not in favor of televising it but but it would for high school students or even middle school students and for the general public who were interested in an important and pertinent case provide a means for them to see what right now only a very limited audience can view because of the size of the but but but for those who are interested in it for those intellectual reasons surely the the tapes are good enough well the tapes with all due respect and I and I understand your argument don't convey in the same way with as much interest the kind of debate the back-and-forth the visual sense of the action in court and and I know and you know really how dramatic it can we just sit there like nine sticks on chairs I mean it's not a whole lot of a whole lot of visual motion it really isn't it's it's mostly intellectual motion I can say it certainly is gripping if you are answering the question Justice Breyer do you have a different view no I sort of a little while but I think it's were conservative and you would be too if were there if you're there the the the court has lasted the country well and served the country well over a long period of time we're there for a short time were trustees and and we don't want to make a decision that will be non reversible and hurt the court so you start there and then sometimes I think you know when we had the term limits case out of Arkansas I just wish people could have seen that it was such a good case I mean you had Jefferson and story on one side and Madison and Hamilton on the other side and it was the term limits it was it was any what you saw is everything evenly balanced with the precedents and what what are the group I won't go into the case but if they could have seen that across the country people would have been able to see in that oral argument nine individuals struggling with health an important constitutional question that would have been good for the court and everybody all right so what's the problem well one problem is that were a symbol and and if it were us in our court it could probably be in every criminal case in the country and you would get rid of what what have you do it with jurors what about the the the criminal witnesses etc and you don't know what happens with symbols or would people come up with a misimpression namely the oral arguments 5% of the case 3 percent of the case it's really done in writing and they don't see that and more importantly people relate to people you relate to people I do when you see him they're your friends or you're not your friends or whatever but we're making decisions that are there to affect 309 million people who aren't there and in our minds we have to take those 309 million into account and will that come across and then there is the problem that Justice Scalia mentioned which is Nino says quite right how do you know you can make people look good or you can make them look bad depending on what 30 seconds you take and it's already call today and let's not make it worse we wear black robes because we are speaking for the law not for ourselves as individuals and that's a good thing so add those up and you say I don't know I would like to know more I really would there are places that have it and don't have it there are courts that have it and others that don't have it there is Canada that has it there's California in some situations you have a hundred different situations in respect to that why can't we get some real information not paid by for by anybody that has an interest in this but Pew or some of the foundations and see what happens to attitudes to judicial attitudes to others so so what you're getting I think and and maybe eventually you know it's going to be there is no other way to see things but but visually and everybody is doing that and then won't even see it just seem weird what we do now but and then it'll all change but before that time I think when that's a little boring but I think information is something that would make me easier and until I become easy about it until we become reasonably convinced that won't hurt the institution you're going to get a conservative reaction that's that's what I think is the truth senator it's maybe unfair to put this question to you since you're such a youngster here but do you really the best thing that's been said about me long do you really think the process in the Senate has been improved since the proceedings have been televised well just as you took a pass earlier I think that there are mixed views but in general I think that openness and transparency improves institutions and for all the reasons that you have so eloquently talked about you or role in educating the American public I think that an audio and visual recording of Supreme Court proceedings would potentially do the same and I think that whatever the results of televising Senate proceedings and I I was only facetious when I said I would take a pass I do think that it has been a step in the right direction of providing more transparency and disclosure and understanding on the part of the public now I'll let you and and the public be the judge of how it views us but I think in general Americans should understand the challenges as well as the role that their institutions face and since my time has expired and I I want to thank you again for being here and and I am not at all dismissive of the points that you've made on the contrary have great respect for them but perhaps we can provide you with some more information that would be persuasive in the advantages and the positives in in those kinds of greater availability or accessibility so thank you for being here today and I also want to thank you for raising the issue of state courts because I am one who has spent a lot of time in state courts you often have to consider the results of state courts and all too often we in this body failed to understand how integral the state courts are to dispensing justice in this country thank you

Channel: SenatorBlumenthal

Views: 141,644

Keywords: Senate, Blumenthal, Supreme, Court, Stephen Breyer, Antonin Scalia

Id: z_Bl2NUGSMs

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2011