The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday.

Could the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court find themselves competing for airtime with the judges from “American Idol”?

Maybe so. The U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees have approved three new bills that would lift the time-worn ban on cameras in the Supreme Court and most other federal courtrooms. The only exceptions would be federal court cases in which judges think camera access might violate someone’s rights.

One Senate bill would require camera coverage of Supreme Court arguments unless a majority of the justices vote against it. The problem with that, given the high court’s stubborn resistance to the photographic age, is the easy escape it offers camera-shy justices: Give a majority of justices a chance to continue their ban, even on a case-by-case basis, and there’s a good chance they will. Justice David Souter endorsed such aloofness when he told a congressional committee in 1996: “The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.”

Things don’t have to go that far.

The high court should open its doors to cameras without outside nudges. If not, Congress does have powers of persuasion. Senators confirm justices and federal judges. Congress also controls the court system’s purse strings. It’s within the lawmakers’ purview to advance transparency and openness in the branch that interprets and enforces the law.

The case for cameras in courtrooms, including the Supreme Court, gets stronger by the year. All 50 states allow cameras in at least some state courts. Video technology continues to shrink and become less intrusive. Thousands of hours of court time already have been broadcast over truTV, the new name of Court TV, and conventional TV news shows and webcasts without a surge in obstructed justice, security problems or privacy violations for jurors or witnesses.

The Supremes have taken baby steps toward modern technology. Chief Justice John Roberts has allowed the court to post a same-day transcript of arguments on its Web site. For the most part, though, the court is just creeping up to the radio age. In the nail-biter Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election, Chief Justice William Rehnquist yielded to electronic media requests for the first time and released audio recordings of the arguments on the same day they were uttered. The court has since released same-day audio in only 17 cases, most recently in the March 18 arguments over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s gun statute.

Why not allow live audio? Or streaming video on the Web? Why not TV cameras?

Roberts gave a disappointing response to such questions at a Washington, D.C.-area high school in January. “It’s not our job to educate the public,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “Our job is to decide vitally important cases under the Constitution.”

That’s a woefully narrow view of the job. Just open your doors to cameras, chief justice. The people will educate themselves.