> I'm not a lawyer but I can't see how having every court case public is a good thing. Well for one, the US has a common law legal system, so it's entirely dep

> I'm not a lawyer but I can't see how having every court case public is a good thing. Well for one, the US has a common law legal system, so it's entirely dependent on the public availability of court cases. In terms of fairness, I think the current status quo is (in this limited respect) very reasonable; you're entitled to absolutely iron-clad privacy in the interactions which you pay for, which are your interactions with your attorney. When you start making use of public funds by bringing your dispute to the courts, the public has a right to know what it's money is being spent on and it has a right to know what's going on in the community. The vast majority of legal disputes are settled in state district courts, which are local in scope. I also don't think privacy mixes well with the degree to which the judiciary is uniquely unaccountable, though this is admittedly less and less relevant as time goes on since basically nobody in government is accountable for anything at this point.