Wednesday, March 16, 2005 4:50 PM
Slate's Dahlia Lithwick wrote a great
article (online via Law.com) last month called "High Court Ethereality," which took a look at how the internet and the rapid dissemination of information enabled by weblogs and headline feeds have--and have not--impacted the United States Supreme Court. Key questions that Ms. Lithwick asks are "[h]as the Court changed the way it does business in response to the Internet?" Also, "[h]as anything about the Court been shifted to acknowledge that there's a new media in town?"
The article mentions the impact that specific members of the blawgosphere, including Scotusblog and How Appealing, are having in blowing apart the traditional notion of a news cycle. In many cases, blawgs like these can and do comment, interlink and analyze cases before the Court within minutes to hours of oral hearings.
I'll leave it to you to read the entire article (it is worth it) but ultimately Ms. Lithwick answers her own questions both "yes and no." Clearly, there have been some significant changes at the Court enabled by technological advances (including making audio files of oral arguments available for big cases almost immediately after close). On the other hand, the tradition-rich Court still holds tight to many time-honored policies, such as making credentialed reporters rely solely on paper and pencil for note-taking. As part of the article's intriguing finish, she finishes with a heady conclusion: "don't underestimate the wily bloggers and Internet reporters. They've already proven-time and again-that there are no marble walls in cyberspace."