The following is cross-posted with permission from our good friends at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. The original post can be found here. 

The Federal Judicial Center has released a study which concludes that "detected social media use by jurors is infrequent, and that most judges have taken steps to ensure jurors do not use social media in the courtroom," and implies that juror use of the Internet and social media during trial is not a growing problem.

The Blog of the Legal Times reports that the Superior Court of the District of Columbia – the local trial court for the nation's capital – has issued a new administrative order regarding use of electronic devices in the courthouse.

UPDATE: Two years after the law went into effect, California's Judicial Council recommended that the statute be repealed, saying that that the possibility of criminal sanctions actually impeded courts' inquiries into improper online activity by jurors. The criminal provisions were repealed in 2014, 2014 Cal. Laws chap. 99, although civil penalties remain.

It is a fundamental principle of the United States legal system that courts should be open to the public.  This principle is widely regarded as more aspirational than factual, because of numerous practical barriers to courtroom access -- not the least of which is that most of us do not have the time or ability to travel to the court to witness proceedings in person.  While the news media report on judicial proceedings,

Jurisdiction: 

• Massachusetts