Press Coverage of the United States Supreme Court

UBLIC OPINION of judicial behavior and law are of vital consequence in the American legal system as a critical aspect of a polity based upon principles of popular sovereignty and limited government. This is particularly true of the United States Supreme Court. With the spread of legal realism and social science criticism in this century, the Supreme Court has lost the somewhat protective cloak provided by past myths of mechanical judging, and its opinions and processes are subjected to increasingly broad political scrutiny. Consequently, respect for the Supreme Court and law in general depends increasingly upon popular appreciation of the inherent merits of the Court's work. At the same time legal concepts and institutions are subjected to an ever diminishing time span of technical and social change which imposes heavy pressures upon the Court and upon the American people whose ultimate support the Court needs. Great obligations are placed upon the high court justices and media of mass communications by these circumstances. This is a study of how these obligations were treated by the Court and leading representatives of the American press in the Court's October Term, 1961. The Court's press facilities and provisions for news coverage by the wire services and key newspaper reporters are described first. Then reporting in the metropolitan press of two major cases is analyzed. That is followed by brief examination of wire service coverage of the 1961 Term generally. This analysis supports the conclusions that both the Court and the press need to improve their methods if essential public understanding and support of the Court and a dynamic legal system are to exist. This problem of press coverage of the Supreme Court was publicly recognized by Mr. Justice Clark after the close of the 1961 Term when the Court found itself engulfed by a rising tide of public criticism over the Prayer case, decided June 25, 1962.1 Justice Clark explained that popular misunderstanding was the cause of discontent, and he laid much of the blame on newsmen.2 Pressure on reporters to communicate the ruling rapidly with numerous other opinions announced the same day was described by Clark as the chief cause of inaccuracy. Clark's criticism of the press was answered immediately by representatives of the Associated Press and United Press International. The AP's reporter at the Court for the past eighteen years, Paul Yost, said: had it 100% accurate. We stuck right to the opinion and dealt specifically with what the opinion said. 3 Washington Bureau Manager for UPI,