Prompt release of marriage audiotapes
on Mar 19, 2013 at 4:04 pm
The Supreme Court will release, shortly after the arguments are finished next week, the audiotapes and written transcripts of the hearings on the two same-sex marriage cases, the Court announced Tuesday afternoon. The sound recordings and the transcripts will be available on the Court’s website — http://www.supremecourt.gov/.
The announcement estimated that the audiotapes and transcripts should be available by no later than 1 p.m. on Tuesday for the case involving California’s Proposition 8, and by no later than 2 p.m. Wednesday for the case involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Proposition 8 case is scheduled for one hour of argument; the DOMA case is scheduled for one hour and fifty minutes.
This arrangement breaks from the Court’s usual pattern of releasing the audiotapes only at the end of the week in which a case was heard. Under current practice, written transcripts are available on a same-day basis after the argument. Several news organizations had asked the Court to make the audiotapes available on a same-day basis for the marriage cases.
