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Hi and welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court Podcast. I'm Dahlia Lithuic, 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,

Sonja West from the University of Georgia, Ronnell Anderson Jones from Brigham Young University, both of whom are scholars in the field of the First Amendment.

Sonja and Ronnell, 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.

Sonja 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.

So that leaves an even more limited number of seats for just members of the public.

What we've seen in recent years for high profile cases like the same sex marriage cases or the Affordable Care Act case, is that lines have started forming to get those, you know, few seats that are remaining available for the public.

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