I am reminded of Chicken Little’s famous mantra as I listen to some Supreme Court Justices’ reactions to the prospect of televising oral arguments. Their fears—such as Justice Kennedy’s warning that allowing cameras in the courtroom may change the Court’s dynamics—are, in my opinion, overblown. . . . I can make this guarantee—televising the Supreme Court’s oral arguments will not produce the disastrous results predicted by some frightened Justices; rather, it will yield positive results. Most notably, it will increase the public’s knowledge of the appellate process.

The idea of televising Supreme Court oral arguments is undeniably appealing. . . . There is an understandable hunger for anything that will help us understand these nine individuals who have so much power—who can even choose a President, or at least hasten his anointment. . . . Whatever the Justices’ motives, televising the Court’s arguments is a terrible idea. It is both misleading and unnecessary. Misleading because it would only randomly tell us something useful about the Court, and unnecessary because the Court is already more open than the other branches.

Senator Arlen Specter took a bold and long-overdue step on January 22, 2007, when he introduced legislation that would require the Supreme Court to allow television coverage of its proceedings. But instead of making his case with a straightforward appeal to the public’s right to know, Specter has introduced arguments in favor of his bill that seem destined to antagonize the Court, drive it into the shadows, or both. Chances of passage might improve if Specter adjusts his tactics.

In 2005 when Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) first proposed legislation requiring the Supreme Court of the United States to televise its oral arguments, he resuscitated a twenty-plus-years long effort by several news organizations to achieve the same goal. For at least that long, C-SPAN has been ready to provide the same kind of video coverage of the federal judiciary as it has been providing of the Congress and the president. If cameras are ever permitted in the high Court’s chamber, C-SPAN will televise every minute of every oral argument, frequently on a live basis, and will do so in its trademark format of no interruptions or commentary.

Putting aside philosophical questions about public access to government proceedings—what we now call “transparency”—and without regard to whether televising Supreme Court arguments is a logical extension of the common law’s “absolute personal right of reasonable access to court files” . . ., my real concern about whether Supreme Court arguments should be televised is somewhat narcissistic. Will it make my job—as a plaintiff’s civil rights lawyer who dabbles in criminal defense and post-conviction matters and who has had five adventures as “arguing counsel” in the Supreme Court—easier? I explain below why I think the answer is a resounding “yes.”

In traditional media outlets, on the Internet, and throughout the halls of Congress, debate about whether the Supreme Court should be required to televise its public proceedings is becoming more audible and focused. To date, these discussions have included such topics as the potential effects of broadcasting the Court, the constitutionality of Senator Arlen Specter’s current congressional initiative, S. 344, and how the public would use or abuse televised sessions of our highest tribunal.

The Justices’ public statements suggest that their objections are to televising—not to cameras—and welcoming cameras to video record Court proceedings for archival purposes will serve the Justices’ interests well. Video recording can forestall legislation recently introduced in both houses of Congress that would require the Court to televise its proceedings. The legislation is more likely to disappear from the congressional agenda once the Justices have acknowledged legislators’ legitimate arguments for improving access to the Court. And when initiating video recording, the Justices can allay the concerns they have expressed about televising by strictly limiting the distribution of the archival footage.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s relationship to patent law sometimes seems like that of a non-custodial parent who spends an occasional weekend with the kids. The custodial parent is, of course, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. . . . The Supreme Court controls the frequency of its patent law visits, and it is free to grant certiorari more often if it is unhappy with the Federal Circuit’s stewardship. . . . When each of these Supreme Court visits eventually comes to an end and everyday life resumes, it becomes plain once again that the Federal Circuit is, for all practical purposes, the parent in charge.

Though KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. is now widely acknowledged in the bar and the academy to be the most significant patent case in at least a quarter century, that view dramatically underestimates the importance of the decision. The KSR decision has immense significance not merely because it rejected the standard of patentability that had been applied in the lower courts for decades, but also because it highlights many separate trends that are reshaping the patent system.

The recent Supreme Court review of KSR v. Teleflex, eBay v. MercExchange, and Microsoft v. AT&T manifests the Court’s current interest in the patent jurisprudence of the Federal Circuit. Now it is evident that the Court has a level of concern sufficient to guarantee the possibility of grant of certiorari—whereas formerly a case could rarely generate sufficient interest for review. For long-range importance in patent law, KSR stands alone as the single most important Supreme Court patent decision on the bread and butter standard of “obviousness” in the more than forty years since the 1966 Graham v. John Deere. KSR will remain the leading interpretation of the Graham standard for quite some time.

The U.S. House of Representatives began September by passing the Patent Reform Act of 2007. This bill, if enacted, would make major changes to U.S. patent law. Given the universally recognized need for improvements to the U.S. patent system, passing a patent reform bill in the House should have been easy. It was not. . . . What made for such tough congressional sledding?

The Supreme Court in KSR v. Teleflex clarified its 1966 decision in Graham v. John Deere, avoiding the sea change to a synergy-based standard that many had expected—and perhaps feared. KSR has raised the bar set in Graham for seeking patent protection—by providing a flexible test for obviousness—while simultaneously making it easier for accused infringers to defend themselves. Moreover, KSR will change the strategies of both patent prosecutors and litigators.

The website of the Santa Ana, California-version of Pay-to-Stay uses hotelier-type verbiage in describing features of its alternative jail program. . . . Surely this manifestation of pay-to-stay is embarrassing. But, as so honestly represented, pay-to-stay could prove salutary for the criminal justice system if recognized as part of our somewhat ritualized cycle of constructive self-embarrassment over the role of wealth in criminal justice. More specifically, pay-to-stay could become one of those occasional eruptions of transparency about the forms of currency exchanged in the market for punishment.

[W]hen people are arrested in southern California, they face a two-tiered jail system in which the overwhelming majority of detainees and offenders are crammed together in crowded, dirty, violent, unsafe conditions that Judge Pregerson recently observed violate “basic human values.” Governments offer certain inmates an escape hatch: in exchange for payment, their jailers will keep them safe. The perceived legitimacy of this arrangement, I will explain, depends in part on the implicit acceptance of two racial stereotypes: that most criminals are violent black men, and that white people, including white lawbreakers, are vulnerable victims.

The dirty little secret is out: people with more money get a better deal in our criminal justice system. . . . It is an abomination to divert our attention to pay-to-stay programs instead of finding the resources to improve our general jail facilities to make them tolerable for every inmate. Don’t get us wrong—if we suffered the misfortune of being arrested, we would dearly love the opportunity to pay for a private jail facility. However, the pay-to-stay initiative is unlikely to do anything other than mask the problems in our correctional facilities. Pay-to-stay programs should only be endorsed if a serious commitment is first made to improving the overall conditions in correctional facilities.

This symposium takes place against a backdrop of three recent Supreme Court decisions affecting patent law—KSR v. Teleflex, Microsoft v. AT&T, and eBay v. MercExchange. It asks whether these cases together represent, as some commentators have suggested, a recent upheaval in patent law and modified relationship between the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court.

Approximately fifteen California jails have implemented pay-to-stay programs. These programs allow some offenders to pay a daily fee in order to serve their sentences in a city-run or privately-managed correctional facility rather than in a county jail. In some programs, benefits include assignment to a private cell with a regular door, separation from violent offenders, access to the jail’s movie collection, and the ability to carry an iPod or cell phone. The symposium considers the implications of these pay-to-stay programs.