Televised Trial of Proposition 8?

I'm in favour of televising as much of legal proceedings as possible. Of course there are downsides - I remember watching the Anna Nicole Smith custody case back in 2007 (how did I cope before live US cable news feeds?) and seeing Judge Larry Seidlin take centre stage and get momentarily drunk on celebrity. That said, I thought he was rather good although I suspect English judges would have a heart-attack at the prospect of anything similar in the UK. Well, our latest global court case could be the ongoing Proposition 8 proceedings in California. Pink News reports:

'Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker announced his intention to record or webcast a pretrial hearing on 6 January, subject to approval from the governing body, as a precursor to the challenge itself, scheduled to begin on 11 January.'

Pink News phrases the story in such a way that it might be a misleading. The challenge is to the Supreme Court of California (not the US federal Supreme Court as is implied in the PN story - at least not yet) and Judge Vaughn Walker is Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The case at the heart of this storm is Perry et al v Schwarzenegger et al. Due to the interest in the case, the US District Court has created a special page on their site viewable here.

The court (rather fabulously) is also providing a special e-mail announcement service that anyone can join. Subscription is free, open to anyone, and available at this link. The case is likely to dominate the first part of 2010 as far as the law and sexuality is concerned. Let's home it's televised (even with the time difference!) so that people around the world can view this important case as it happens. Students - subscribe to the announcement service!

Share this: