Court's in session -- online

Here's a new way to burn time online: Spend the day in court.

As of last week, you can watch a livestream of judicial proceedings of the Quincy District Court in the greater-Boston area on a new Web site: OpenCourt.us

The stream is to "Law & Order" as C-SPAN is to "The West Wing" -- there are a lot of arraignments and smaller hearings and plain old paper shuffling -- but it's a great way to become more familiar with the court system, and to reintroduce openness to the courts.

Like other branches of government, the Judicial Branch is required to operate in the sunshine -- it's one critical way of holding public employees accountable.

But no one goes to court anymore; even news media are devoting fewer resources to  court proceedings, with the result that a lot of public business is being conducted out of public view.

Project partners -- including WBUR, Boston's NPR station, the Quincy District Court, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and other legal, media and public-interest groups -- hope to reverse that trend, through technology.

It's a major shift in the system (courtrooms only started allowing cameras under certain circumstances in the 1970s), and partners are sorting through (and blogging about) some ethical and legal considerations as they go. They won't show jurors, for example, or restraining order hearings. They're creating best-practice protocols and a guidebook to help citizens in other districts stream their courts.

The site also includes interviews with court staff, and a glossary so novices can bring themselves up to speed. In their words:

Courthouses were built in the center of town so people could witness the judicial process. Today, generally, the only members of the public who know what is going on are those who have to appear in court or sit on a jury.

We saw first-hand how that unfamiliarity can have real consequences here in Iowa.

Their words, again:

Seeing how a court is actually run, and how real judges make decisions, will ideally spur more confidence in the judicial system.

Besides, it's cool to know how government actually works.