Word: gannett
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last July in Gannett vs. DePasquale that criminal proceedings could be closed to the public, at least under some circumstances, court watchers and the press had difficulty understanding just what the decision meant...
Chief Justice Warren Burger has publicly blamed the press accounts of the Gannett case for the confusion in the lower courts. But his colleagues on the high court disagree over the meaning of the decision, which some court watchers say was carelessly written in the court's rush to dispose of its case load before the summer recess. Though it is unusual for Supreme Court Justices to explain their judicial opinions publicly, so far four have. Burger told reporters last month that the Gannett decision is limited to pretrial hearings. Justice Harry Blackmun, who dissented in the case, told...
Powell indicated that he would be sympathetic to such a First Amendment claim. Late last week, however, Justice John Paul Stevens entered the Gannett fray by pointing out that the high court has never ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed a right of access to judicial proceedings. Stevens told an audience at the University of Arizona College of Law that while the court has protected the right to disseminate information, it has never upheld any right to acquire information. Whether that reasoning will continue to close courtroom doors to the press remains to be seen. In the meantime, legal experts...
...reason is complex, but essential to understanding Gannett. In a separate opinion handed down with the decision, Burger emphasized that the Gannett case involved only a pretrial hearing, not a trial. Since Burger's vote to allow judges to close off pretrial hearings was decisive in making up the court's five-man majority, his opinion should limit the scope of the decision. The confusion arises from some broad language in the majority opinion, written by Justice Potter Stewart and signed by four other Justices, including Burger. It flatly states that members of the public have no constitutional...
Only a new ruling by the Supreme Court can clear up the muddle left by Gannett. This fall the court will have just such an opportunity when it decides whether to review a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court that allowed judges to bar the press from trials. Whatever the outcome in that case or in others that are sure to come up to the high court, the Justices have created the uncertainty themselves. Something is clearly amiss when, as Michigan Law School Professor Yale Kamisar puts it, "Justices have to explain their decisions at the next annual A.B.A. meeting...