Camera-Shy Courtrooms: Balancing Extraordinary Transparency and the Appearance of Justice

High-profile trials alert us to the dissonance between transparency and accountability in the federal judiciary. This Note will explore this tension and argue that when policymakers respond to calls for “extraordinary transparency,” transparency should be subordinate to fairness. Part I will discuss the principles underlying public adjudication and how, through various constitutional challenges, the limits of public access have changed over time. Analyzing modern high-profile trials, Part II will demonstrate how those very principles are inadequately protected in jurisdictions that allow unrestrained public access to the courtroom. Part III will describe how transparency, when conflated with accountability, threatens procedural due process rights. Finally, Part IV will provide practical considerations for federal courts and policymakers navigating calls for extraordinary transparency, which prioritize ensuring fairness while accounting explicitly for the limits of transparency. This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.