Open Courts & Justice Gerald Kogan

Florida Supreme Court 1 Minute

The Florida Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to place live video and audio of all its oral arguments on Facebook Live continues to be studied and praised.

Florida’s Public Radio network through its Miami affiliate WLRN recently took a look at how this new form of governmental transparency is working, even as courts around the world examine Florida’s groundbreaking work in opening its courthouse doors.

In the broadcast linked here, reporters interviewed one of the key figures in the Court’s four-decade expansion of openness — former Chief Justice Gerald Kogan. In 1997, Kogan was the first head of the judicial branch to make video and audio of all high court arguments available for free on the Internet and also on the statewide public cable news network called the Florida Channel and via satellite downlink.

Kogan, who was Florida’s 73rd Justice, implemented these cutting-edge changes when he was Chief Justice from 1996 to 1998. His insights into the hurdles he faced as he started the broadcasts are informative and even humorous at times. And Kogan also takes a look at how Facebook Live continues to honor and broaden Florida’s grand experiment with open government.

Follow this link for the interview: https://bit.ly/2DLdIlI

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Published by Robert Craig Waters

Robert Craig Waters is a Florida writer. After leaving journalism in the early 1980s, he worked as an attorney, communications director, and public spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee for 35 years. He grew up on a family farm in Beulah, Florida, not far from the Alabama border, before attending Brown University in the 1970s. His mother's family traces its roots to Weaverville, North Carolina. His father's family is from the small village of Burnt Corn, Alabama, where Mr. Waters spent part of his childhood.

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