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Hi, and welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court podcast. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, the Supreme Court

correspondent for Slate magazine. Now, it is no understatement to say that we are rolling into the

mega term at the Supreme Court. In very, very short order, we're going to hear cases about

marriage equality, the future of the Affordable Care Act, and possibly how the death penalty

is administered, and it's going to be nutty. But we thought before we'd handled those big

cases, while the court is taking a breath, we'd take one too, and ask a more existential

question.

Why is it that we can listen to audio from the Supreme Court, but we can't watch it?

Why are there no cameras allowed in the court?

And to help think through this question of cameras in the court, we bring you two of the great scholars on First Amendment law and the court.

Sonia West from the University of Georgia,

Ronell Anderson Jones from Brigham Young University, both of whom are scholars in the field of the

First Amendment. Sonia and Ronell, welcome to Amicus. Hi, Dahlia. Thanks for having us. So I guess I want to

ask this first question to both of you because you both clerked for justices at the Supreme Court and you know what oral argument looks like.

Sonia West, could you tell us if you were hypothetically a listener to Amicus, who lives in, say, Kenosha and wanted to come to oral argument in the marriage equality cases, what your chances are of having a seat for the entirety of that

argument on that day? Well, your chances are not good, frankly. The Supreme Court, the courtroom itself,

can seat about 300 people, but a large number of those seats are already reserved for members of

the press, members of the Supreme Court bar, the clerks, the guests of the justice are already reserved for members of the press, members of the Supreme Court

bar, the clerks, the guests of the justice. So that leaves an even more limited

...