On March 26 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida, the case involving the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s healthcare acts. According to the Huffington Post’s Politics blog and The Hill’s Healthwatch blog, the case has seen an unprecedented amount of media coverage with some media outlets demanding that the oral argument be televised.

This week, both the Huffington Post’s Politics blog and The Hill’s Healthwatch blog featured comments from Professor Lisa McElroy, who provided her thoughts on whether the healthcare case arguments should be televised. McElroy compared the interest in the healthcare case to that of Bush v. Gore, the case that helped settle the 2000 presidential election. McElroy pointed out that the heightened media interest in the healthcare arguments underscores the relatively limited access the public has to the U.S. Supreme Court. Even though the court will release audio tapes of the healthcare case arguments on the same day of the arguments, normally, for other cases, the court only allows access to tapes at the end of each week and, by that time, media interest has passed, McElroy argued. However, not only does the public have a perceived right to see their government at work, McElroy said, television coverage would give the public the chance to form their own opinions about the court.