Enframing Legal Reality

Only twelve years after its invention in 1956, videotape debuted in law when it was used to record court proceedings in Illinois. ⁴ Today, video is a staple in a variety of areas of legal practice. The video camera not only passively records but actively shapes the civil law practices of wills, torts, patents and copyrights, contracts, insurance, and other substantive fields. Additionally, video influences the law of procedure and evidence. Paratexts are beginning to enframe ⁵ the reality that was once largely the domain of print. They influence and shape depositions, presentations of material evidence, expert tests and experiments, reenactments of events and conditions, "day­in­a­life" accounts, settlement negotiations, and entire trial and appellate proceedings. ⁶ The video camera's eye focuses on federal and state lawmaking, ⁷ videos "testify" at administrative hearings, ⁸ and even the American legal profession and legal academy are taking their lessons from "video law." ⁹

Similarly, paratexts are increasingly supplementing and even replacing oral and print evidence and documentation in the realm of criminal justice. "The criminal case law is rich with examples of tape evidence ...." ¹⁰ Both the prosecution and the accused resort to video in a wide variety of actions, ranging from contempt, perjury, escape, and sexual and obscenity­ related offenses to burglary, theft, and drug crimes. Their uses include videos of surveillance, crimes­in­progress, "sting" operations, searches and seizures, police interrogations and confessions, line­up identifications, the physical and psychological condition of both the alleged victim and the criminally accused, crime scenes, ¹¹ expert depositions and scientific experiments, and ultimately criminal trials and appeals themselves. ¹²

So great are developments in these areas that two national organizations and 121 video companies specialize in videotaping for lawyers. ¹³ Currently, forty­four states allow video cameras in the courtroom for various purposes, while federal courts are experimenting with their inclusion. ¹⁴ More specifically, fifty­nine state courtrooms in ten states and two federal district courtrooms employ video systems to record trial proceedings, either as a supplement to or in lieu of the stenographic record. ¹⁵