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When a judge answers a reporter's call

By Mark Obbie

One of the recurring themes in this course that my legal reporting program offers with Syracuse University's Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media is on the relations between reporters and judges. Tony Mauro will be here next week to talk about that from his perspective as a veteran Supreme Court reporter. Media lawyer Jonathan Sherman appears this week to discuss his take on cultural shifts that have changed how judges respond to the media. And last week, the Federal Circuit's chief judge, Paul Michel, gave a talk on his experiences. Coincidentally, Michel took a call before class from a reporter, Legal Times' Joe Palazzolo, about this story, which appears in the paper today. So we discussed Michel's discomfort over fielding questions about a pending case, but also his belief that judges should help reporters understand the law when it's appropriate for the judge to say something.Michel's comment to Palazzolo, which the reporter uses as his first quote, speaks to the legal climate surrounding a major patent issue without definitively stating a point of view about that issue, or about the pending case. Later in the story, he's quoted as refusing to reveal something that his Federal Circuit colleagues likely would consider confidential.I think Michel deftly walked up to the line without crossing it, and as a result helped a smart reporter produce a better story. Other judges, I am sure, would not go so far. Some would go further. And many reporters wouldn't even think to make the call, conditioned as they are by judge's reflexive no-comment policies. It's a bench-press debate worth having. My view is that the public is served well by judges who don't mind helping the public understand their work -- which, after all, is the public's work.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).