Court News Research Articles

A Social Media Platform Model of Supreme Court News

An economic model of news contends that the pressures of limited column space and market competition force media actors to be strategic concerning which notable events receive exhaustive coverage, if any at all. Applying this framework to the Supreme Court can explain why coverage of the Justices’ decision-making has historically been sensationalized and reserved for decisions sure to have a pronounced effect on public discourse. However, the emergence of social media as a practical alternative for mass media dissemination raises notable questions, chief among them being whether the economic framework fully extends to this newer medium. In this study, I analyze media coverage of the Court’s decisions using Twitter and observe important distinctions among environments for news dissemination. I argue that the apparent reduction in the economic costs associated with coverage dissemination and consumption on social media platforms like Twitter requires viewing Supreme Court news in these environments through an amended theoretical framework.

‘Fake News’ in Seventeenth-Century France: The Case of Le Mercure galant

Abstract Le Mercure galant, one of France’s first newspapers, is notable for its diverse content: politics and foreign affairs, court news, science and medicine, the arts and literature. Directed by Jean Donneau de Visé from its inception in 1672 until his death in 1710, this influential and innovative monthly publication circulated throughout France and beyond its borders. The Mercure’s tendency to blur the lines between truth and fiction, between history and propaganda, and between information and entertainment, makes it an instructive case study in early modern ‘fake news’. Donneau de Visé, a self-styled royal historiographer and the beneficiary of a generous royal pension, dedicated his periodical to the Dauphin and published abundant praise of Louis XIV. The Mercure’s news reporting included distortions and propaganda intended to bolster and further entrench the king’s foreign and domestic policies. The Mercure’s nouvelles, short stories presented as true recent events, constituted another type of ‘fake news’, one that often had a different effect, inviting the re-examination of social norms. The nouvelles appealed to the Mercure’s sizeable community of women readers by accentuating female agency and providing a vehicle for the exploration of scenarios of female empowerment.

What’s in a name? A history of New Zealand’s unique name suppression laws and their impact on press freedom

The principle of open justice, including the media’s right to attend and report on criminal courts, must be balanced with the protection of individuals’ privacy and an accused person’s fair trial rights. Prohibiting media from identifying those involved in criminal cases is one way privacy and fair trial rights may be protected in New Zealand. Court news was not always restricted in this way: 115 years ago all parts of criminal court proceedings could be reported and media decided what information was censored. In 1905, New Zealand judges were given the power to suppress court evidence to protect public morality, and 15 years later, the power to suppress the names of certain first offenders to give them a second chance. The laws now stretch to suppressing many kinds of evidence and the identities of some people accused and convicted of New Zealand’s most serious crimes. Investigation of the 115-year-long evolution of New Zealand’s name suppression laws illuminates a piecemeal, but severe, curtailment of media freedom and a trend of imposition of increasingly complex laws which journalists must keep abreast of, understand and observe to prevent appearing before the courts themselves.

ETHICS IN COMMUNICATIONS AND NEW MEDIA JOURNALISM: A REVIEW ON THE PRESENTATION OF JUDICIAL NEWS IN TRNC NEWS SITES

The new media concept refers to the tools and equipments which are accepted as new in the related period in the light of technological developments. For example, in the era of the invention of TV’s, TV was regarded as a new media technology. While constantly evolving technology brings together internet and new media sites; social media, which became popular after the years of 2000’s, made a great contribution to the dissemination of content produced in the new media. This study aims to address the mainstream new media websites, which have a prominent position in the contribution of speed, principles of communication and legal regulations. In this context, this work will focus on TRNC, especially, the suspects which usually exposed as convicted, without prejudice to their crimes, and the use of their names, surnames and photographs contrary to their human rights. An evaluation have been made from the press survey conducted on the Ada Haber, Detay Kıbrıs, Havadis, Yeni Bakış ve Diyalog internet websites operating in the TRNC through the court news published in November-December 2017 period; At the same time, concrete solutions to the problems identified in the interviews conducted with members of the press working on the new media will be included.

A3. “Mainland and Hong Kong SAR Sign Arrangement on Mutual Recognition and Enforcement of Married Family Civil Case Judgments” People's Court News 21 June 2017.

A3. “Mainland and Hong Kong SAR Sign Arrangement on Mutual Recognition and Enforcement of Married Family Civil Case Judgments” People's Court News 21 June 2017.

The dissemination of court news of the Qing Dynasty

The dissemination of court news of the Qing Dynasty

Scandal! Early Supreme Court News Coverage and the Justice-Journalist Divide

In January of 1900, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Henry Brown (author of Plessy v. Ferguson) had apparently just about had it with the press. He gave what was called “[t]he principal address” before members of the New York State Bar Association in Albany and focused not principally on law, but on what he called journalism’s sensationalistic methods. “Ugly stories are told,” he told the gathered attorneys, “of spies put upon houses to unearth domestic scandals or upon the steps of public men to ferret out political secrets,” including early reports of court decisions. The greatest of the cruelties done by journalists, in Justice Brown’s estimation, were their “assaults upon private character.” The worst of the publications, he complained, were those newspapers that published Sunday editions. The spying and the invasions of privacy of which Justice Brown complained presumably included incidents involving members of the Supreme Court and others who were well-placed politically. “No man,” Justice Brown complained during his talk, “occupies a political position . . . who cannot be driven from it by a combined attack of two or three influential journals.” Brown’s media-focused speech must have been at least somewhat personal. Not only did the literally and figuratively colorful Sunday editions of newspapers annoy him (“[i]f there be another worse than these, the mind of man hath not hitherto conceived them”), but the papers’ use of illustrations was a particular irritation. “The next step in their downward career,” he complained, included the use of “[p]ictures of current events, of battles, of murders and sudden deaths, sometimes copied from photographs, oftener drawn from imagination.” Much of his talk before New York’s gathered attorneys seemed to echo language and arguments from The Right to Privacy, the influential Harvard Law Review article written by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis that similarly condemned newspaper sensationalism and had been published a decade before. But he also seemed directly inspired by the push-the-envelope Pulitzer newspapers of the day, known for their sensationalism; their use of color and other illustrations; and, notably, their Sunday supplements. Pulitzer used the Sunday editions to experiment with “new features and approaches,” including an insert that smelled of perfume. Pulitzer newspapers were also some of the very first to focus on scandal and celebrity. Justice Brown’s anti-media speech received coverage in multiple newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun. The Sun perhaps put it best when it reported simply that the Justice had “severely denounced what he termed sensational journalism.” Biographers would later call Brown a “reflexive social elitist,” and his opinions regarding the journalism of the day seem to be in line with that description. The common person may have enjoyed the Sunday supplement’s sensationalism; Justice Brown did not. The Justice-journalist divide during this period was not limited to Justice Brown’s harangue outside the courtroom. It was a time when he and the other Justices had very precise rules for those who covered the Supreme Court’s proceedings from inside the Court. First, it was suggested that no one observing the Supreme Court, including journalists themselves, could take notes on what was being said. Second, and foreshadowing today’s refusal to allow cameras in the courtroom, it was also suggested that no one was allowed to sketch the Justices as they sat during oral argument. The punishment for those who disobeyed must have been severe. As a Chicago paper explained, “Woe be to you if you violate any of the rules.” The Justices apparently so valued their privacy during the turn of the twentieth century that they even attempted to veto the now larger courtroom because it would accommodate a larger audience. Given that sort of history, it is not surprising that Justice Brown would find the more Court- and Justice-interested journalism of the day utterly unsatisfactory and invasive. This Essay explores some of that early press coverage of the Supreme Court, particularly of its Justices, and it attempts to explain what could have so provoked Justice Brown. The story is personal to Justice Brown, who was of some interest to journalists of the time, but it is also much broader. A Supreme Court press corps that had once been at least somewhat compliant and respectful of the Court became more critical of both the Justices and their decisions, and more interested in them as personalities. Ultimately, this Essay argues that such a history — one that began with at least partial quiet deference and turned distinctly toward sensationalism — laid the groundwork for Justice Brown’s anti-journalism speech and the distrust shown to media by today’s Justices.

The Press, the Audience, and Emotions in Italian Courtrooms (1860s–1910s)

In late nineteenth-century Italy, the court, and especially the court of assizes, became a new and important public space: the law began permitting an audience in order to help control the judiciary power. This article shows that the court audience, hitherto placed at the margins of both historical narratives and historiographical analysis, played a key role in emotional interactions in the modern courtroom. Drawing primarily on court reports published in newspapers, this article offers a systematic and detailed analysis of the way in which the court audience’s emotional expectations, dispositions, experiences, and practices were described and critically evaluated by the press, by the judicial and political authorities, and by legal and social scholars. Furthermore, it highlights the gender and class dynamics at play in the portrayal and perception of the audience at court hearings. Finally, it analyzes the complex relationship between the court audience itself and consumers of court news. This article demonstrates that research on law and emotions should focus not only on the primary actors in the courtroom, that is the judge, defendant, plaintiff, and witnesses, but also on those at the margins: the audience in the courtroom as well as the virtual audience of consumers of court news. In doing so, it shows that the emotional interaction in the courtroom was a two-way process: those on trial performed for their audience, but the audience’s reactions also shaped the way in which future trials played out.

Before Alternative Voices: <em>The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser</em>

Before Alternative Voices: <em>The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser</em>

A Market-Based Model of State Supreme Court News: Lessons from Capital Cases

AbstractIn this article, we present and test a market-based model of news content about state courts of last resort. We test our theory by examining newspaper coverage of decisions in death penalty cases. Our empirical results indicate that news elements of drama, novelty, and sensationalism influence coverage of state high courts' death penalty cases rather than traditional indicators of legal salience. News content either anywhere in a newspaper or on its front page is influenced by similar factors, but front-page coverage is more sensitive to dramatic conviction reversals and the rarity of executions in a given state. Our results suggest that traditional explanations of the relationship between crime and newsworthiness have limited impact on media attention given to state supreme courts. Media coverage of state high courts is instead associated primarily with the behavior of the court and its justices.

A Christmas Gift for the Supreme Court: How a 1959 Holiday Party Eclipsed a History of Discrimination

On December 28, 1959, the New York Times published a little news item that was, in hindsight, both (1) a public relations triumph for Banning E. “Bert” Whittington, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Press Officer at the time, and (2) a jurisprudential and institutional relief for the Court. COURT DEFIES PRECEDENT: “One of the last institutions holding out against the Christmas Party succumbed last week. The Supreme Court had a pleasant but sober affair arranged by its press officer, Banning E. Whittington. Five of the Justices – Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr. and Potter Stewart – joined the small staff of employes. There were fruit punch, cookies and carols by a high school group, with some audience singing, too.” The story has a tone that should ring familiar in the ears of modern consumers of Supreme Court news reporting: good-natured indulgence of that somewhat dull, somewhat behind the times, somewhat culturally clueless wallflower among our great institutions of national government. But the background to that story suggests that the Court was not at all clueless in 1959. Indeed, the Court’s handling of that Christmas party, and the Times coverage of it, may have helped the Court occupy the high ground during its continuing campaign in the 1960s against racial discrimination.

Time and the Poetess: Violet Fane and Fin-de-Siècle Poetry in Periodicals

The overwhelming variety of discourses, readerships, authors, editors, and paratextual interventions engaged with periodical publications challenges interpretive approaches to poetic taste and cultural value, often discouraging readers who may be further deterred by the temporality, popularity, unapologetic commodification, or perceived lack of discrimination in quality they find in periodicals upon first glance. Poetry published in Victorian periodicals is often overlooked because of dismissive prejudices, past and present, against periodicals as ephemeral, therefore inferior and unimportant. Yet the nineteenth-century periodical genre chronicles modernity through notions of and ephemerality and, as Mark Turner suggests, part of the periodical-ness of the periodical is exploring the various ways that was imagined and experienced by nineteenth-century readers. (1) Turner describes the ways the periodical press both represented about the shifting nature of and participated in creating those anxieties through the cacophony of media time evident in periodicals. (2) When we fail to consider periodicals we erase evidence of intriguing discursive dynamics that can contribute to our understanding of Victorian poetry's cultural relevance and uncover obscure textual nuances that help us interpret the past, as well as the future. The poetry we canonize and explicate for modern readers is traditionally the poetry in volumes, but the practice of valuing volumes over individual publishing instance draws a curtain over the past and limits understanding of Victorian poetry on its own terms. Individual poems published in periodicals vie for attention from readers who are rapidly consuming texts: advertising, miscellaneous reportage of current events, court news, society columns, fashion plates, essays, crossword puzzles, word games, reader correspondence, and other literature by a mixture of anonymous, pseudonymous, obscure, or popular authors. Visual messages from illustrations are enmeshed with all other textual discourses, which include the periodical's personality, branded by paper, columnar style, degree of illustration, intellectual depth, intended readership, miscellaneity, and reputation. Of course, a reader's decision about what to accept and what to ignore is unknowable and perhaps unimportant, but the possibilities for meaning remain on the page, inseparable from the poem as long as the print lasts (and now with digital preservation, perhaps much longer). In many cases, the print of Victorian periodicals lasted longer than the poet's reputation, largely because of the poet's presence in the periodical. Viewing poems by fin-de-siecle poet, novelist, and essayist through the lens of their first publication in Victorian periodicals reveals new ways we may appreciate obscured women writers and understand how they articulate relationships between form and content within the perpetually cyclical format of periodicals. (3) Here Fane's poetry interrogates notions of in thematic modes such as seasons of nature, passages of life from youth to old age and death, suspension of in dream and fantasy, and the dynamic nature of celebrity. Reading Fane's poetry as deeply embedded in her fin-de-siecle print culture suggests not only a literary history of nineteenth-century women s poetry predicated on negotiating literary celebrity's fraught dependence on notions of ephemerality and permanence, but also s self-conscious interventions in women's poetry as her poems thematize the relation between the woman poet and women and time. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Violet Fane (fig. 1) was a pseudonym for Mary Montgomerie Lamb Singleton Currie (1843-1905), descendant of a literary, aristocratic family in Sussex who claimed among its ancestors the poet John, Earl of Rochester. She married Irish landowner Henry Sydenham Singleton in 1864 and had four children. When she began her professional career in 1872, adopted a pen name from a fictional character in Benjamin Disraeli's novel Vivian Grey (1826) because her family disapproved of her literary ambitions. …

An Economic Theory of Supreme Court News

In this article, we develop and test an economic theory of Supreme Court news. We hypothesize that information about the Third Branch is newsworthy when it has lower production costs and qualities attractive to the audiences and advertisers desired by news organizations. We examine Supreme Court news in elite newspapers, television news broadcasts, and online news sources during the October 2008 and 2010 terms. The results of our quantitative analyses indicate that all three types of news outlets are more likely to provide content about Supreme Court decisions with substantive importance but vary in their responses to costs and qualities appealing to the lay audience. We conclude by discussing the similarities and differences among news outlets with regard to their selection of Supreme Court information as news content.

Tom Clark under Fire: The Consequences of Congressional Investigations of Supreme Court Justices

Tom Clark under Fire: The Consequences of Congressional Investigations of Supreme Court Justices CRAIG ALAN SMITH Introduction President Harry Truman’s nomination of Attorney General Tom Clark to the United States Supreme Court on August 2, 1949, following the unexpected death of Justice Frank Murphy, was regarded as a political appointment, one bom offriendship or loyalty rather than ability or stature. Though not a complete surprise—the Attorney General’s office was then regarded as a stepping-stone to the Court—news commentators expected Truman to choose a Catholic to replace the only Catholic Justice.1 When the United States Senate confirmed Clark’s nomination (73 to 8), Republicans cast all the “nay” votes. Opposition leader Homer Ferguson drew attention to numerous suspect instances while Clark served as Attorney General, but the most compelling reason for some Senators to vote against Clark was his failure to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Calling the nomination “transparently political,” Fergu­ son made no effort to hide his displeasure that Clark was not called for questioning, and when the Judiciary Committee approved Clark’s nomination (9 to 2) without inviting Clark to testify, the two “nay” votes princi­ pally protested his absence at the hearings. From the floor of the Senate, Robert Taft called Clark’s nomination “outrageous” because the Committee reported it favorably without Clark’s testimony.2 By the time of Clark’s nomination, a nominee’s personal appearance before the Judiciary Committee was not a wellestablished practice, but neither was it unprecedented. In 1925, Harlan Stone became the first Court nominee to testify, but the next five nominees were not invited. Not long after 140 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed Court “packing” plan, the Committee heard from five successive nominees, including Attor­ neys General Frank Murphy and Robert H. Jackson. Clark’s nomination, on the other hand, followed five successive nominees who were not invited, thereby blunting Taft’s charges.3 The first and only nominee (to date) to refuse to testify was Appeals Court Judge Sherman Minton, who Truman nomi­ nated shortly after Clark following the unexpected death of Justice Wiley Rutledge. As a Senator, Minton had defended Roose­ velt’s Court “packing” plan, but, as a nominee, Minton refused to testify based upon the separation ofpowers,4 a view Clark later adopted when Congress sought testimo­ ny about his work as Attorney General. Whether Clark should testify or whether he could refuse once he was on the Court became increasingly contentious for the next four years. Clark’s absence at his confirmation hearings did not halt further inquiry into his Justices Felix Frankfurter and Stanley F. Reed appeared as character witnesses at the first perjury trial of Alger Hiss (above), a former State Department employee suspected of spying for the Soviets and accused of lying in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Frankfurter and Reed were subpoenaed to testify, but some news accounts reported that their trial appearances were voluntary, leading to congressional proposals prohibiting Supreme Court Justices from serving as character witnesses. Justice Department service. He was subjected to incessant probing by congressional com­ mittees investigating old Justice Department cases. It is doubtful any sitting Justice faced such protracted investigations oftheir off-thebench record until the failed 1968 nomination of Abe Fortas for Chief Justice and his subsequent resignation eight months later. Tom Clark endured threats ofimpeachment or requests for his resignation, demands for his testimony, and intense public scrutiny of his conduct as Attorney General. This essay examines congressional efforts to compel Clark to testify and whether his refusal based on the separation ofpowers was convincing. It highlights news coverage of these investiga­ tions and compares it to secondary historical scholarship, much of which overlooked Clark’s part in Truman administration scan­ dals or their implications for future congres­ sional inquiries of sitting Justices. On several occasions congressional committees consid­ ered or expected Clark’s testimony on matters unrelated to his judicial duties, and each time Clark avoided appearing before lawmakers. Historical circumstances made it possible for Clark to maintain the separation of powers, but questions over whether Congress could compel a Justice’s testimony or whether a...

Television Coverage of the Israeli Supreme Court 1968-1992: The Persistence of the Mythical Image

During the 1980s the Israeli Supreme Court went through revolutionary changes, becoming more active in public life and in the political arena. Scholars predicted that the institutional legitimacy of the Court, based on its image as an objective, neutral, and apolitical institution, would decline following these changes. However, public polls showed that the Court's institutional legitimacy remained very high long after the 1980s. This Article aims to explain the lack of a decline in the institutional legitimacy of the Court during those years by presenting an empirical study of the Court's news television coverage beginning with the inception of Channel One (1968) until just before the entrance of the commercially financed Channel Two (1993). The Article shows that the increase in the visibility of the Court was not substantial enough to diminish the Court's image. Moreover, television continued to present the Court, by and large, through a mythical perspective as an objective, neutral, and apolitical body. The Article concludes that the Israeli public, unaware of the changes in the Court's adjudication, continued to award the Court support based on the Court's unchanged fabled image presented by the news media. Hence, a politically active court may continue to receive high public support based on in its mythical image if the changes in its adjudication are not visible to the public. Research of the portrayal of courts in the media is thus of utmost importance in understanding changes in the institutional legitimacy of courts.

Conditional press influence in politics

Chapter 1 Table of Contents Chapter 2 1 Introduction Chapter 3 2 Understanding Media Influence in Politics Chapter 4 3 The Theory of Conditional Media Influence Chapter 5 4 Economic News Chapter 6 5 Foreign Conflicts News Chapter 7 6 Supreme Court News Chapter 8 7 Conclusion Chapter 9 Notes Chapter 10 References

Godly Advice, Court News, and Atlantic Adventures: Maurice Browne and his Patrons in the 1580s

Maurice Browne was an ambitious minor figure at the Elizabethan Court, seeking patrons. In 1580 he became London agent for the wealthy Wiltshire gentleman John Thynne of Longleat, sending news and vigorous advice on godly religious attitudes. While emphasising God's role, Browne worked at Court for Thynne's worldly interests, offering hints on tactics and even dress. Browne had useful contacts because he was in the service of Secretary Sir Francis Walsingham, who sent him on diplomatic business to the Azores, but also encouraged him to join Sir Humphrey Gilbert's doomed expedition to found a Newfoundland colony, during which Browne, and Gilbert, drowned.

Horns of a Dilemma: The Sun, Abolition, and the 1833–34 New York Riots

The earliest years of the N.Y. Sun found the newspaper publishing more than entertaining police court news. Benjamin Day and police reporter George Wisner—soon a half owner of the Sun—opposed slavery, with Wisner favoring an immediate and Day a gradual end. Both used columns and stories to support their positions, sometimes at variance with each other. Their coverage may have touched off a 1834 pro-slavery riot in New York. The dilemma is: News may have an effect different from that intended.

The Origin of the Interview

Early interviews appear in the middle 1830s. Two of the most popular features, borrowed from England, were the humorous treatment of police court news and reports of more or less sensational trials.