The Supreme Court issued more important decisions Thursday — on abortion, environmental protection, federal agency power and the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy settlement. The justices were on the bench in the Washington courtroom to announce the opinions, and some even read their dissents aloud — a rare occurrence that signals strong disagreement with the majority.
Yet, while anyone with internet access can instantly get the rulings themselves, only the lucky few in the courtroom could hear the words of the justices who spoke out. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lamented the unwarranted delay with dire consequences in the abortion case, Moyle v. United States; Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out the majority’s “power grab” over administrative agencies in SEC v. Jarkesy.
Whatever one thinks of their words, there’s no good reason to keep them cooped up. After all, the court livestreams oral arguments. So it’s not a technological problem.
I noted the transparency issue last June in connection with Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas speaking about affirmative action. Making the court’s practice less defensible is that the audio is released eventually. You can now go to this link, for example, to hear Sotomayor and Thomas from last term.
But you’ll have to wait to hear this term’s announcements, and there’s no good reason for that. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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