The headlines were unprecedented. “Stephen Harper lashes out at top judge on Supreme Court”; “Chief Justice hits back at Prime Minister over claim of improper call”; “Duelling statements over Nadon appointment reveal PMO fight with top court.”

Riveting as they were, they did not begin to capture the depth of the drama playing out in the nation's capital in May 2014 – then- Prime Minister Stephen Harper issuing a statement suggesting Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada tried to engage him “on a matter that is or may be” before the court; the chief justice issuing her own counterstatement to categorically deny there was ever any such communication between her and the government. The spectacle played out for weeks, drawing in the opposition parties in Parliament, the Canadian legal community, and the news media. It spilled onto the global stage: the American College of Trial Lawyers supported McLachlin, as did the International Commission of Jurists, which investigated the available facts and concluded that Harper's criticism “was not well-founded and amounted to an encroachment upon the independence of the judiciary and integrity of the Chief Justice.”

While surprising in its tone, the Conservative prime minister's eruption did not come out of the blue. It was ostensibly tied to the failed appointment of Marc Nadon, Harper's choice to fill one of three seats on the Supreme Court reserved for Quebec. Nadon was a semiretired Federal Court of Appeal judge with a track record regarded as unremarkable by commentators, save for a dissent in which he alone sided with the government in Khadr v. Canada (Prime Minister), involving the repatriation of a Canadian citizen imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. After the Nadon appointment was challenged, the Supreme Court was thrust into the political fray. In Reference Re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6 it was asked to clarify both the eligibility requirements for judges representing Quebec and the scope of Parliament's power to unilaterally change the court's composition. The majority's decision essentially disqualified Nadon. It was widely seen as a blow to the government of the day, which had moved to pass a law to try to ensure his eligibility.

This statement by one of the senior judges in the Israeli court system reflects the increasing frustration felt by judges about current media policy that requires prior approval of the Chief Justice or the intervention of the spokesperson of the Judicial Authority for virtually all communication between judges and journalists. Despite changes in the organizational structure of the information services of the courts, and increasing concern for the image of the courts in the media and its potential effect on public trust in the courts, the basic policy of judicial distance from the media and the ethos of “letting the decisions speak for themselves” still dominate within the Israeli legal establishment (Peleg and Bogoch 2014).

This chapter will describe the current status of judicial-media relations in Israel, including the changes that have occurred over time, as well as the unintended consequences of the court's media policy. It is based on both publicly available material from the Judicial Authority's Information Services, as well as information conveyed to us by the spokesperson, press statements by judges and reporters, recent research on the media coverage of the court, and interviews conducted with 40 presently serving and retired judges and justices and 30 journalists. First, we will describe the Israeli judicial system and the research on the media coverage of the courts in this country. Next, we will present the structure and organization of the Judicial Authority Information Services, and the changes that have occurred over time in the court-media relationship, including the reaction of the Judicial Authority to technological changes. Finally we will discuss the unintended consequences of the court's media policy, and the dilemmas that these have triggered among both journalists and judges.

INTRODUCTION

Mexico shares many traits with other Latin America new democracies, both in terms of social, economic, and cultural background and in terms of the institutional and regulatory options taken by its formal constitutional system. The country, however, pulls out from regional common trends in a number of conspicuous dimensions. Thus, in contrast with its southern neighbors, it transitioned to democracy without enacting a new Constitution. Mexico's legal path is marked by piecemeal and continuous reformism, and today its legal and institutional framework is a complex mix of last-generation tools interacting with nineteenth- and twentieth-century legacies.

In this chapter, in describing the decision-making protocol of the Mexican Supreme Court and in more generally analyzing the way it communicates and builds its relations with the press and the wider community, we will encounter this distinctive superimposition of old and new. Thus, as we will see, the Mexican Supreme Court is – together with the Supreme Federal Tribunal of Brazil – the originator of a most interesting new development in comparative constitutional law: it has decided to go public on judicial deliberations. While the principle of “open justice” has been known for long and the right to have a public trial in the criminal domain is standardly recognized, the specific stage when Justices debate on the merits and ponder out how they will vote is generally kept outside the public eye. Even courts that hold public audiences and are wholly transparent with regards to which Justice has voted what, still keep the deliberation stage in secrecy. The Plenary Chamber of the Mexican court, by contrast, not only broadcasts the deliberations, but also makes their written transcript permanently available on the website and even publishes, in politically salient cases, the drafts to be discussed.

It is clear that in generating these developments – supplemented with nonjurisdictional initiatives destined to cultivate a particular “institutional image” – the Court wishes to send a very powerful signal: a message of transparency and openness that is easily associated to a commitment to increase trust and build up social and political legitimacy. The way the system actually works in Mexico, however, cannot be understood without having due regard to many other elements of social, legal, and institutional context.

INTRODUCTION

In 2008 the Supreme Court of Argentina began implementing a judicial communication strategy. Crafted in the mid 2000s in response to low public support for and a lack of trust in the judiciary, the Supreme Court's communication strategy promises to create a more open and accessible judiciary. The Court's thinking: greater transparency, purposeful communication, and trained reporters would help the Court address its legitimacy and credibility deficits. Because the media plays a crucial intermediary role in shaping the public image of the court, media inattention, or worse misinterpretation or misrepresentation of judicial decisions, may serve to undermine judicial power and legitimacy. High courts have an institutional interest in making sure the press communicates the message justices want the public to understand about decisions and processes. Staton's (2010) work on the Mexican Supreme Court's use of strategic communication demonstrates how judges may construct their own power and legitimacy in part through a public relations strategy. Similarly, the Argentine Supreme Court has implemented a series of reforms aimed at increasing the court's transparency as well as a broader communication strategy with the explicit goal of improving the Supreme Court's legitimacy and public image and fortifying its authority vis-à-vis other political actors.

This chapter describes the Court's communication and media strategy and asks whether these reforms have served to mitigate the Court's credibility gap with the public. The analysis is preliminary. The reforms have unfolded over multiple years and have been fully implemented only recently. Moreover, the Court and media have operated in a highly polarized political context that increasingly divided society between those who supported the Kirchner administrations (in power from 2003 to 2015) on the populist left and those who did not. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's efforts to improve its credibility and begin to reconstruct its public legitimacy have succeeded among key social and political audiences, helping the Court to build stronger relationships with civil society organizations and the media and make important democratic allies (Litvachky and Zayat 2007, 126).

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between Australian courts and the press and other forms of news media in the twenty-first century has been shaped by several factors and has not been uniform across the country. Australian courts (and lawyers) have traditionally maintained a policy of ‘no comment’ when faced with questions from journalists. There has simultaneously been increasing frustration by the courts in relation to perceived inaccuracies in media reporting yet a resistance by courts to explain publicly how cases are dealt with. Australian courts are now becoming more aware of how they interact with the public and how information is disseminated. The rise in numbers of unrepresented litigants has been a significant factor in the increasing focus by all Australian courts on the provision of information, not only to the media, but to all court users. Courts have also been forced to contemplate appropriate ways of interacting with the growing numbers of citizens who are not journalists but who choose to comment about court cases in non-traditional ways. Fewer and fewer people are waiting for the evening television news or the morning newspaper to obtain information about what is going on in the courts. Traditional forms of media are becoming significantly less important. Instead, electronic and digital media are at the forefront of the dissemination of information both from the courts and about the courts. The response of Australian courts to the new media age depends heavily on the personality and attitude of senior members of the judiciary towards new communication platforms. Some of the lower courts have embraced new forms of electronic communication to actively engage with the public. Others, including Australia's High Court, have steadfastly remained aloof from media commentary. It is difficult to know if judges are satisfied by media coverage in Australia, because they maintain a policy of not speaking to the media. Similarly, public perceptions of the High Court are rarely documented. This chapter examines the policy shift that has occurred in Australia over the past two decades that has seen courts taking greater responsibility for the dissemination of information about court cases, the role of courts and the work of the judiciary. The days of waiting for the morning newspaper or the evening television news to find out about court cases, whether from the High Court or other courts, are over.