Should the Supreme Court allow full-length, unedited, gavel-to-gavel television coverage of oral arguments?”
The Supreme Court, like any other appellate court, only spends a few hours a week in oral arguments. So live coverage wouldn’t fill the programming week. They would have to fill the rest of the time with something else. Few people would actually watch, except for the rare case of some significance. Those who do watch would most probably be bored to tears for several reasons. One, the best that you can hope for would be to have a camera covering counsel at the lectern and a camera on the justices. Hopefully, if a justice asks a question, the camera would pan on the speaking justice. If you’ve ever watch a video taped deposition, you’ll know that the technology involved will force people to fall asleep. This is because of the way that we watch television nowadays. If you watch video outtakes from shows from the fifties like “I Love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners” you’ll find them slow paced. That was because back then the camera would linger for four or five seconds before the scene shifted
