In the 1922 case of Craig v. Harney, the judge ruled that “A trial is a public event. What transpires in the courtroom is public property...There is no special perquisite of the judiciary which enables it, as distinguished from institutions of democratic government, to suppress, edit, or censor events which transpire in proceedings before it.” This viewpoint coincides with the First Amendment rights provided by the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”
The judge was trying to upholding the rights of citizens to witness their government at work, echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg addres when he asserted that the United States is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
If America is truly a democracy, then its citizens should be allowed to see how judiciary proceedings are being conducted. Also, by not relying on secondhand accounts of trials, ostensibly the truth should be preserved to the general public, since they are not watching the events through the filter of an artist’s rendering or a journalist’s recollection of the words spoken in court. People have the right to make their own interpretations about a case through the lens of a camera.
