Lawmakers in the new session of Congress have already filed bills going after the U.S. Supreme Court on two old issues: allowing cameras in Supreme Court proceedings, and challenging a 1976 ruling on campaign finance limits.
Representative Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) once again introduced on Friday the Cameras in the Courtroom Act, which would allow television cameras for all open sessions unless the justices decided it would violate the due process of the litigants.
Access to momentous deliberations in the Supreme Court is limited to just 50 seats for the public, Connolly said in a statement. “This limited seating suggests an elitism and propensity of secrecy unworthy of the third branch of our government,” Connolly said.
Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas), a former prosecutor and judge in Texas, is a co-sponsor on the bill. Connolly introduced the same bill a year ago with 23 co-sponsors, but it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and never seen again.
Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has once again filed a bill asking her fellow congressmen to call out the Supreme Court’s famous 1976 decision on campaign financing in Buckley v. Valeo. The same bill last year died in the House Judiciary Committee.
Kaptur’s bill once again states that the Supreme Court misinterpreted the First Amendment and failed to recognize that the unlimited spending of large amounts of money on elections has a corrosive effect on the electoral process.
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