LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
General Public v. U.S. Supreme Court
Posted by Ernest Miller on Friday, October 18 @ 18:14:38 EDT Free Expression
As LawMeme noted in its original report on the oral argument in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court does not permit the general public (aka average citizens) to take notes during oral argument - that privilege is reserved for members of the bar and credentialed press (Live From Eldred v. Ashcroft - I). Additionally, transcripts of the oral arguments are initially available only for those willing to pay hundreds of dollars to a private company. Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has written an article for Findlaw's Writ condeming these practices and calling for the Supreme Court to change them (Too Much Order In The Court: How The Justices Betray Their Own Free Speech Principles). He also provides some other options, such as suing court officials for violating the First Amendment.
 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· Eldred v. Ashcroft
· U.S. Supreme Court
· Live From Eldred v. Ashcroft - I
· Akhil Amar
· Findlaw
· Writ
· Too Much Order In The Court: How The Justices Betray Their Own Free Speech Principles
· More about Free Expression
· News by Ernest Miller


Most read story about Free Expression:
The Future of Virtual Kiddie Pr0n and Other Notes on Ashcroft v. Free Speech

Article Rating
Average Score: 4
Votes: 1


Please take a second and vote for this article:

Bad
Regular
Good
Very Good
Excellent


Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Re: General Public v. U.S. Supreme Court (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Friday, October 18 @ 22:34:50 EDT
Access is of course a major issue here, but what about copyright? If there were to be a leak of a transcript could Alderson claim copyright? I think if copyright rests anywhere it is with the Lessig brief and the oral argument it could be argued is a derivative. Surely Lessig intended to inject any proprietary expression into the public domain. But I highly doubt he could be said to have granted an implied non-exclusive license to a for profit company. Obviously if you buy a transcript you probably agree by contract not to reproduce, but what about third-parties outside of privity of the contract?
Is the oral argument even copyrightable subject matter? Is it considered a federal document? Alderson's fixation certainly doesn't seem to meet the originality requirement. Interesting issues inside of interesting issues.


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die


All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php