« Law - "Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service" for copyright violation | Main | Ind.Decisions - More on "Gay-rights article stirs debate over student freedoms" »

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Courts - "Webcasts open a window to Texas Supreme Court"

The Houston Chronicle reports today:

WHILE the Texas Supreme Court falls below the U.S. Supreme Court in the judicial hierarchy, it leaped ahead of its federal counterpart last week in the transparency of its proceedings.

Congressmen, television networks and journalists have tried for decades to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to allow its proceedings to be televised, but have not overcome the steely resistance of the justices. "The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body," Supreme Court Justice David Souter once said.

Not so in Texas, where last week, our Supreme Court began offering live video Webcasts of oral arguments on its Web site (www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/). These Webcasts provide Texans with a wonderful opportunity to gain insight into the decision-making of the highest court in the state, a court which decides the scope of our rights under the Texas Constitution, the constitutionality and proper interpretation of the statutes passed by our legislators, and many other cases critical to the functioning of our civil justice system.

Here is the page from which to access the oral arguments.

The video arguments are available beginning with March 2007. However, in this day of You-Tube, the access to the Court's videos is fairly clunky, and I never did get it to work -- you apparently have to download additional plug-ins.

Audio versions of the Texas Supreme Court oral arguments have been available since Septemeber 2004 and can be downloaded as MP3s (like the 7th Circuit), which allows the user to listen via I-Tunes, etc., as well as on the computer.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 31, 2007 03:05 PM
Posted to Courts in general