The Power of the Courts

Marcia Oddi over at the The Indiana Law Blog has a couple of interesting post up now which raise the issue of the power of courts:

First off, a Columbus, Ohio attorney is challenging the Ohio Supreme Court’s move to determine what court records the public should access online:

Cleveland lawyer David Marburger, of the Ohio Coalition for Open Government, said a court- appointed commission drawing up rules on what court records the public should have access to does not have the constitutional authority to do so.

“When you give a small group of people, seven people, the power to decide what everyone should have access to, you have automatic mischief, maybe not intended mischief,” said Marburger, an open-records attorney who represents The Plain Dealer and other Ohio newspapers.

“The court doesn’t have this kind of power,” he said. “The court is not a little legislature.”

Indiana Law Blog quoting the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Marcia had an earlier piece up this month about the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s cutting off online access to court records.

All of this mirrors the situation in Indiana where the Indiana Supreme Court is enabling its own online access to local court records called Odyssey which has displaced the systems put in place by local county courts to make records available online. In effect, the local courts - who used to exercise broad control over their own records - have seen these powers forfeited to the central court administration.

The second issue is one on the powers of a trial judge to issue a gag order on a litigant:

Mark McGaha wanted to share his frustrations about the Department of Child Services with the public, but he never got the chance.

McGaha did an interview with an Indianapolis TV station, but a Fountain County judge issued a restraining order barring the station from airing his complaints or even showing his face — apparently without even having seen the footage.

The segment about family advocacy group Honk For Kids was broadcast March 13, without McGaha’s comments and with his face blocked out in a group shot of parents.

The Indiana Law Blog quoting a Tim Evans story in the Indianapolis Star.

The article quotes Indiana Law School Professor (Indianapolis) Henry Karlson calling the order a “prior restraint” under the US First Amendment. I’ve talked about Honk for Kids before, here and here. It is an advocacy group aimed at highlighting issues in Indiana’s child protective services system.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Domestic Relations, Indianalaw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.