A lawyer discovered how far the U.S. Supreme Court will go to close itself off from the public when it hears a case, no matter how many people on Twitter may be interested.
Casey Mattox went to the court on Tuesday to see historic arguments over whether to strike down the Obama administration’s healthcare law.
His plan was to give live updates and the idea appeared to work as descriptions from the arguments showed up on the Twitter feed of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group where Mattox is a senior counsel.
But after finding out about the social networking, the court marshal’s office asked Mattox to stop, citing a policy against electronic communication, a spokeswoman for the Alliance Defense Fund said afterward.
Mattox “complied with the marshal’s directions when asked to stop communicating,” said the spokeswoman, Katie Blechacz.
Except for the errant tweets, and reports from journalists who left the proceedings early, the only way to follow the healthcare case was to wait in the dark until after Tuesday morning’s two hours of arguments.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
One Response
The Supreme Court is heavy on protocol. I have seen court personnel tell people that may not drape their coats over the pew in front of them; rather, coats must be held on one’s lap. To sit and tweet in the Supreme Court would be like tweeting in shul. The difference is that in shul, we have chutzpah and mouth off to those who tell us to silence our phones. In the Supreme Court, such people would be removed and dropped outside the door.
We would do well to learn from such protocol.