Much has been written about the need for an independent judiciary to act as a check against the arbitrary use of government power and as the great insurer of individual and human rights. Indeed, an independent judiciary is the linchpin of democracy; without it the power of the executive cannot be limited or made accountable. But judges need journalists to make their voices heard. Without the press, judgments would not be publicized, inaccuracies and misinformation might not be corrected, and the public would be unaware of the laws under which it is governed. More to the point, judges also need favorable press coverage. Without positive coverage, judges run the risk of having their judgments mocked and delegitimized and the trust on which their authority rests eroded. In the end, journalists have the last word deciding which judgments make news and which judgments remain in the shadows. While judges are often reluctant participants in the media game, the failure to play it well can be devastating.

There is also an impressive literature extolling the need for a vigorous press to act as a bulwark against corruption, secrecy, and the misuses of power. As the legendary journalist Walter Lippmann famously wrote about the power of the press, “it is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and the other out of darkness and into vision.” Without a free and vigilant press, citizens would be deprived of much of the information that they need to make decisions about their lives. Yet little has been written about the relationships between judges and journalists and the need for high courts in particular to undergo the same level of scrutiny and criticism that political leaders, corporations, and civic organizations endure. Without that scrutiny, arbitrariness, corruption, and errors would go unreported. Until recently, high courts have been shielded from media exposure by the high walls of tradition and authority. Yet over the period of the last 20 years, many of these walls have come crashing down. Journalists have gained increasing access to high courts, and high courts have developed complex strategies for navigating through media waters and negotiating their relationship with journalists.

INTRODUCTION

The Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) is widely regarded as one of the more powerful high, constitutional tribunals in Latin America (Brinks 2005; Taylor 2008; Nunes 2010; Kapiszewski 2012). This power is often understood in terms of the effects of court decisions, effects which have been expanding to be more general and binding since the 1990s, giving the STF increasing policy-making authority (Desposato et al. 2015). The STF is also generally regarded as a very visible high court, due in large part to the media attention it has drawn in deciding major issues of national importance, including racial quotas and affirmative action, family status for same-sex couples, stem-cell research, land invasions, pension and tax reform, and political corruption (Taylor 2008; Kapiszewski 2012; Falcão and de Oliveira 2013; Desposato et al. 2015). However, with few exceptions (e.g., Falcão and de Oliveira 2013), an underexamined feature of the court is its unusually high transparency. Indeed, compared with its regional peers, and even with the US Supreme Court, the Brazilian STF can reasonably be called the most transparent high, constitutional court in the Americas.

This chapter offers three main contributions: (1) a descriptive documentation of this high transparency, (2) an examination of some of the sources of this transparency, including media relations, and (3) an examination of some of the implications of this transparency, especially regarding public opinion of the court. In documenting the STF's uncommon transparency, I draw on existing data on the openness of national courts across Latin America, specifically, a study of the web-based access to judicial information conducted by the Center for Judicial Studies of the Americas (Centro de Estudios Judiciales de las Americas, CEJA (N.d.)), which is an organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). In examining the sources of this transparency, I build on recent scholarship on the rising media coverage of the STF (Falcão and de Oliveira 2013), and also on the STF's data and documents on its own public relations operations and internal, intrainstitutional efforts to generate media coverage of itself.

South Korea is widely accepted as a showcase of two miracles: economic prosperity and political liberalization. This “impossible country” in Asia has moved from being an economic wasteland in the 1960s to being an economically wealthy and politically vibrant nation in the 2010s (Tudor 2012). The steady evolution of Korea into a functioning democracy is remarkable, given that Koreans were ruled by a series of strong-arm authoritarian governments in the 1960s through the mid 1980s (Breen 2004, 196–220).

Korea is rated as “free” by Freedom House, a democracy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. The nation's news media are able to report on government policies and corporate wrongdoing with few external constraints (Freedom House). Free speech and a free press in Korea have significantly contributed to consolidation of a rule-of-law system in Korea in recent years (Youm 1994).

The judiciary, too, has seen democratic gains. Before the “people power” revolution in Korea in the mid 1980s, entrenched judicial practices were oppressive. In this predemocracy era of Korea, the unwritten code of conduct for Korean judges was to err on the side of limiting their communication to their judicial writings. In other words, Korean courts and judges were discouraged from directly interacting with the press beyond their court opinions. Now, the judiciary is much more open.

In fact, the Supreme Court of Korea (SCK) and the Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK) have been making a concerted effort to address a lingering distrust of the courts via a commitment to open communication with the public. “The Korean Judiciary will invite the public to see the courts,” SCK Chief Justice Sung-tae Yang stated in 2014. “We will open our minds and make the courts transparent to obtain people's understanding. We will exert our best to continuously reach out to the people and thus realize the true spirit of the law” (Yang 2014, 7). Likewise, CCK President Han-Chul Park (2014) hopes that his court web page will be “a wide open forum” to offer CCK information to the public and to receive opinions from the public.