Today I'll be attending the Loyola Law School Symposium: On the Brink: The Judiciary's Tug of War with Technology. Famed appellate blawger Howard Bashman and I will be on a joint panel that starts at 4 pm. The event is open to the public. The address is 526 Pine St., room 405.
Here's a short blurb about the conference:
In recent years the amount of information available from the Supreme Court has transformed the landscape of technology in the courtroom. Although the Court still operates mostly behind closed chambers, technology has enabled a wide-eyed view into the courtroom through a variety of tools, like the availability of oral arguments online via Oyez.org, the speed of Court coverage, and immediate blog responses. In this way technology has changed not only the ways we learn about the high Court and other courts, but it has also changed the way we learn about the law.
Professors and scholars can analyze an oral arguments' effects on the decision, students are also able to analyze the argument and gain more insight into a case, oral advocates are able to perfect the advocacy and bloggers have the ability to raise new ideas and create new legal theories across vast distances.
However, the Supreme Court has not always been cooperative, and remains reluctant to increase technology in their courtroom. At the yearly budget hearings the Justices ask Congress for more money due to an ever increasing docket and Congress explains that the minute the justices allow cameras in the courtroom to increase transparency for their constituents, they will be granted the budget increase in full. Thus, the tug of war between the judiciary and technology.
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