Justice on Display: Should Judges Deliberate in Public?

Of the three branches of U.S. government, the Judicial is the most secretive. Judges appear in public for trials and then disappear to cogitate in solitude before rendering their verdicts — which often appear suddenly, as if by divine intervention. But what if courts had to act transparently — the way other parts of government do — and let us watch them deliberate?

That is the question chief justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is asking. Last week she proposed a series of reforms for her court. Among them: requiring justices to hold their deliberations about which cases to take and how to decide them in the open. That could mean conducting deliberations in a place where the public could watch or broadcasting their discussions on television or the Internet.

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