Court Sourcing? Taking the Supreme Court Up on Its 'See for Yourself' Challenge
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, March 3 2009
Should the Supreme Court be joining the NHL, NBA, and NFL in jumping on the replay wagon? In 2007, the court sided with the police in Scott v. Harris in which a car chase ended with a cruiser ramming a speeding car (and permanently injuring the driver). But don't take it from us, the court said. Instead, they posted the cruiser-filmed video clip of the chase online to, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, "allow the videotape to speak for itself." But, as the New York Times Adam Liptak reports, a Harvard Law Review study that let 1,350 Americans watch the tape found that who's responsible for what in a chaotic scene is a normative judgment -- far less black and white than whether a home run is fair or foul. Most Americans indeed saw what the Supreme Court's majority saw. But, writes Liptak, "African-Americans, liberals, Democrats, people who do not make much money and those who live in the Northeast," blamed the police for the crash. What's more, while Justice Scalia called it "the scariest chase I ever saw since 'The French Connection,'" Nick Cage fan John Paul Stevens thought it had more of a "Raising Arizona" feel to it, and thus dissented. (One of these two things is true.)
As Liptak notes, this might be a sign of things to come. A petition filed with the Supreme Court last month referenced as its first citation not a court precedent or law review article but a YouTube video. Perhaps the judicial branch also needs its own hub.