Should SCOTUS cases be livestreamed or shown on TV?

[Geoffrey Howe]

Absolutely not. We shouldn't have cameras in Congress either.

Strongly agree about no cameras in court, but not sure about Congress. Why? We started televising the House of Commons in 1989 and I'm not sure it has had a net negative impact. On the one hand I think it inspires a certain respect for the place with its majesty, poor behaviour of MPs notwithstanding (they can change that themselves); and "humanise" the place so power does not seem (as) detached . On the other hand sitting in the chamber is not their only job - there is committee work, constituency surgeries and so on - and people might get the wrong impression of a representative's function; for instance, one sees ridiculous YouTube comments when the chamber is empty of people saying they're not doing what we pay them for.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Absolutely not. We shouldn't have cameras in Congress either.

Strongly agree about no cameras in court, but not sure about Congress. Why?

Not who you were responding to, but the establishment of C-SPAN & the resultant ability of news networks to pluck any flashy congressional snippets thereof undoubtedly played a significant role in turning Congress into the dysfunctional - let alone do-nothing - hall of sh*t that it is today, in that Congress devolved from actually being about inquiring into given matters at hand into a polarized hellhole in response to every congressional proceeding becoming the news' clip-bait. In the post C-SPAN era, a member of Congress is just campaigning rather than legislating whenever they happen to find themselves in front of a camera. Of course, the alternative to that was who-the-hell-knows because greater congressional transparency is indeed obviously important for representative accountability purposes, but still, with cameras having already f**ked that branch of government up, it's not unreasonable to not want to see them forcibly inflicted upon another.

Congress does seem to function like that, in a way that the HoC doesn't (at least not to that extent). Odd, I wonder why one and not the other - surely there is something beyond televising that has done this.
The argument for cameras in court has always struck me as weak nowadays given how easily you can access opinions online and eventually get the audio.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Congress does seem to function like that, in a way that the HoC doesn't (at least not to that extent). Odd, I wonder why one and not the other - surely there is something beyond televising that has done this.
The argument for cameras in court has always struck me as weak nowadays given how easily you can access opinions online and eventually get the audio.

It probably has to do with the superiority of the parliamentary system. The House of Commons is essentially where all power is centralized. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are all members and are all accountable. The system here in the US has resorted to pointing fingers. In this current political paradigm, all fingers are pointed at the Senate. We have too many veto points. The Founders intended for periodic change, but too many believe the Constitution arrived on stone tablets from Jesus Christ himself.

Strongly agree. The system generally works better, and this is manifested in how they behave. Meanwhile, the civil service...well there's a sitcom for that.