Immigration Ban Hearings Make Case For Transparent Courtrooms

Rulings and hearings concerning President Trump’s immigration order over the last two weeks have built a strong case for more transparent and accessible courtrooms, says the Washington Post Editorial Board. When a federal judge issued a ruling halting Trump’s executive order limiting immigration and temporarily cutting off access to refugees and citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, the document released was “not very illuminating,” the Post writes. “But [Judge James Robart] sits in a judicial district that has been experimenting with cameras in the federal courtroom, and every minute of the oral arguments that led to his decision was recorded and released promptly after he ruled.” That allowed observers to note that Robart spent time probing questions of equal-protection, and appeared skeptical of Trump’s basis of limiting travel based on stopping terrorism. A few days later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit argued the same case, via live-streamed audio conference open to the public. Though the Board acknowledges that there are instances in which video cameras are inappropriate, “in criminal proceedings in which witnesses would be uncomfortable, for example,” it maintains that “Americans … deserve to see – literally – how their government functions.”