The COVID-19 crisis, and the associated pivot to virtual hearings and livestreams, has exposed plenty of flaws in the judicial system and its practitioners. We’ve seen a lawyer who could not get rid of a cat filter, defendants appearing semi-naked, attorneys smoking cigars and all kinds of shenanigans with the mute button.
Add in a variety of nefariously hijacked feeds, such as the one in Australia broadcasting the deportation hearing of tennis player Novak Djokovic, and this has not exactly been a great two years for the dignity of the American judicial system.
Judges tend to skew older (thank goodness). Anyone of a certain age can empathize with the technical challenges of the current era. And, as the former New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin and many others can attest, judges and lawyers have not been the only ones embarrassed by the new presence of cameras in what they thought were private domains, even if they had turned the cameras on themselves. When it comes to hot mics, we’ll stipulate that there for the grace of God go many.
