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Courting ChangeRethinking the Supreme Court press corps for a new era.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, April 11, 2008, at 6:36 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

• Real. Live. Justices. The nine justices used to mostly hang out in chambers, teach classes in Italy, and hide from the public. Not anymore. Eight of the nine sitting justices cooperated with Jan Crawford Greenburg and/or Jeff Toobin for their best-selling court books last year. Most of the nine have been burning up the radio waves and podcasts and luring the TV cameras into their chambers at a pretty fair clip. And in the case of Clarence Thomas, at least, they've also been sharing personal truths and existential doubts in hardcover form. Now, Antonin Scalia is getting ready for his close-up. David Souter (aka the "Silver Fox") remains in his secret underground bunker eating apple cores. This new judicial openness has offered an unprecedented opportunity for journalists like Greenburg and USA Today's Joan Biskupic to introduce the sitting justices to the American public, with long reported pieces on personality and ideology and the relationships between jurists and how they affect the law.

• New technologies. Every once in a while, according to some Euclidian geometric formula too complicated for the average mortal, the justices will agree to release same-day audio recordings of oral argument. I still think the whole idea is wrongheaded and that they should release same-day audio for every case. Starting yesterday. But it seems to me the press corps has a rich and as yet mostly untapped opportunity to bring these voices alive, at least on the days in which they are there for the listening. We've experimented with sound and images here at Slate, just as we've experimented with the idea of covering the big decisions of late June in dialogue—as opposed to monologue—form. But I can't help but think there's more to be done with both audio and transcripts—I just don't know what it is yet.

• Opinion! While most of the Supreme Court press corps still strives mightily to report both oral argument and the decisions with perfect neutrality, some have increasingly incorporated a little point of view into their diet. Longtime print veteran Lyle Denniston blogs for SCOTUSblog, and fellow print vet Greenburg blogs for ABC. Liptak, whose brilliant Sidebar column is all the better for his opinions and point of view, may, by necessity, light the way toward some new kind of objective-expert-opinion Supreme Court coverage that isn't nearly as horrifying as it may sound. It always struck me as doubly peculiar that the folks with the most expertise about the court were the ones forced to keep their views to themselves.

• Reclaim the Constitution. Here's the way I figure it: If all the con-law professors can blog the court, we in the Supreme Court press corps might want to moonlight a little in blogging the Constitution. The legal academy is in the midst of a decadeslong, fascinating public debate about methods and styles of constitutional interpretation. It's something about which the public is curious and, I suspect, would love to know more. One of the ways in which we might add value is by helping the American public follow along in the originalism/active liberty/strict construction/minimalism cha-cha.

OK, court-o-philes. Those are some of my ideas. How about yours? Should Supreme Court reporters be writing more about the justices as people or less? Including more of their own points of view or not? Blogging? Canoodling with clerks? Kicking it with the audio? Send mail to . I reserve the right to quote your insights unless you tell me otherwise.

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Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Photograph of U.S. Supreme Court by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
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