Sotomayor: Put high court on TV

WASHINGTON -- During her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was careful not to telegraph how she might vote as a Supreme Court justice — except on one issue.

On the question of whether the high court should allow its proceedings to be televised, Sotomayor signaled that she's a thumbs up.

"When there have been options for me to participate with cameras in the courtroom, I have," Sotomayor told the panel. She said she will "relay those positive experiences" to other justices if she is confirmed.

In Washington, the Supreme Court is the only one of the three branches of the federal government where television cameras are not a regular presence.

The comings and goings of President Obama and his White House predecessors have been regularly captured on video for years. The White House press secretary's daily briefings have been available for live TV broadcast since 1995. The House of Representatives has offered gavel-to-gavel coverage via C-SPAN since 1979; the Senate followed suit in 1986.

In a poll of more than 1,000 voters nationwide earlier this month for C-SPAN, 61% said they favored putting the Supreme Court on TV.

Several key congressional players agree.

"I'd like to see the court televised," Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., told Sotomayor during her confirmation hearings. Two other committee Democrats — Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, both from Wisconsin — expressed the same sentiments.

Feingold is a co-sponsor of a bill by Specter that would require cameras at the Supreme Court. Other Judiciary Committee members who have signed on: Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former Texas Supreme Court justice.

Televised proceedings would open up a court now accessible only to those who "are in DC and can wait in line or pay someone to wait in line" for one of about 200 seats available to the public for oral arguments, says Bruce Peabody, a Fairleigh Dickinson University professor who has written about the prospect of cameras in the Supreme Court.