The Audience
Television shows and movies often depict crowded courtrooms where an interested and sometimes rowdy public reacts emotionally to the events in court. Members of the press often cannot stop their loud explosive flash bulbs that they need to detonate to capture front page pictures for the evening edition. And even if scenes like this did take place sometimes in high profile cases, they rarely do in commercial disputes. Still, the public is generally allowed to watch commercial court proceedings, and what the audience looks like varies.
Why should you continue to read this post about the audience in commercial disputes?
You are looking for an air conditioned room to sit in for free.
You are afraid of public speaking and want to know whether to be afraid of court.
You want to know what to look for when you visit court.
Many Galleries are Empty
Many courtrooms in commercial disputes have places for an audience, but no actual audience. This is because a courtroom hearing may not make sense to someone who isn’t already familiar with the case. Unlike in Judge Judy, there is no narrator who explains the basic dispute to the audience. Everyone in the case knows what it is about already, and so the details may be confusing or lost to outsiders.
Also, many people have better places to be than to watch a commercial dispute. They’re not the most interesting things to watch, and they take place when many people are at work or at school. When I visited a courthouse in Rome, the courtrooms looks like small offices that barely had room for the litigants and the judge, because the staff did not think strangers would want to come watch. When I visited a courthouse in Berlin, the staff told me that people did not want to watch commercial court and so there were no audiences.
It can be a little strange to be in a large, empty courtroom. Since the rooms in the U.S. are designed to be large enough for a crowd, sometimes the judge is far away from the well where the lawyers speak, so they may need microphones or to speak up. Arguing in an empty room that can hold many people may give a lawyer the impression that the case is unimportant or that things are happening informally.
The fact that the room is often empty but for staff and the litigants and counsel and the judge usually makes it noticeable when there is someone in the audience. What are they doing there? Sometimes the judge will even ask. Who are you? In my experience, it’s usually a family member of a litigant or a witness, or a lawyer who came just to watch. In criminal cases, sometimes that person is a reporter.
A lot of court hearings take place online, and judges often publicize the video conferencing links so the general public could watch. Even so, usually no member of the public joins.
Some Courtrooms Are Full of People Waiting For Their Own Cases
Most of the time I have seen courtrooms with full audiences are when a judge convenes a hearing for the same time (or close to the same time) as other hearings. As a result, many people in the audience are waiting for their own case to be called. A smart lawyer arrives early for their case to watch how the judge conducts business in other cases. Taking the temperature of the room and adapting to the judge’s style can help prepare for arguments in your own case.
It can be interesting to watch the proceedings in other cases before yours is called. Since cases are hard to follow without reading the relevant submissions, it’s not always engaging to watch another set of lawyers argue without that context. Still, I have felt a pang of anxiety in watching another lawyer struggle, or piqued curiosity when interesting facts came up.
Even in these courtrooms with some audience, however, there are usually no big reactions from the audience. There are no rounds of applause of jeers or commotion. People largely sit silent. If they begin to whisper among themselves, court officers will usually shush the audience.
Some Courtrooms Have a Real Audience
There are some exceptions to the rule of empty galleries in commercial proceedings.
A major exception is appellate courts. Every U.S. Supreme Court argument usually has a packed audience. The stakes are high, that court is widely studied, and it is a spectacle to see the court do its pomp and circumstance. But other appellate courts may have audiences, too. In addition to lawyers who are waiting for their turn to argue (often this can be dozens of people), there are often law students and other observers, especially for high-profile cases.
There are a few high-profile cases that get public attention. In commercial cases, that usually means a blurb in the paper but not really a crowd in court, though. Still, once in awhile, there are people who come to watch, such as when the New York State Attorney General sued then-former President Trump.
During the summer, interns and students may attend court proceedings. I had a few occasions during warm months when a bunch of young people sat in a courtroom and heard me argue. Years before, I’d been one of them. But young me sometimes had no idea what was going on, and I wonder if the interns who watch court now are following the cases, since it may require some background in the case and deeper legal training to follow some arguments.
Criminal courts sometimes have an audience. There are people who enjoy watching arraignments or criminal trials because of the drama and cross-section of society that show up in those cases. It’s not always riveting, but it can be fascinating to hear a brief description of who just got arrested and for what and then see people who just went through a rough few hours. Commercial cases, of course, don’t usually have these attractions.