Dan Bernstein, Justice in Plain Sight: How a Small-Town Newspaper and Its Unlikely Lawyer Opened America's Courtrooms (University of Nebraska Press 2019).
Justice in Plain
Sight is the story of a hometown newspaper in Riverside,
California, that set out to do its job: tell readers about shocking crimes in
their own backyard. But when judges slammed the courtroom door on the public,
including the press, it became impossible to tell the whole story. Pinning its
hopes on business lawyer Jim Ward, whom Press-Enterprise editor Tim Hays had come to know and trust, the newspaper
took two cases to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s. Hays was convinced that
the public—including the press—needed to have these rights and needed to bear
witness to justice because healing in the aftermath of a horrible crime could
not occur without community catharsis. The newspaper won both cases and
established First Amendment rights that significantly broadened public access
to the judicial system, including the right for the public to witness jury
selection and preliminary hearings.
Justice in Plain Sight is a unique
story that, for the first time, details two improbable journeys to the Supreme
Court in which the stakes were as high as they could possibly be (and still
are): the public's trust in its own government.
