In 2005, then U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III received a request from a network to permit a high-profile trial regarding intelligent design to be televised. But Jones said he quickly learned the federal judiciary didn’t allow hearings to be broadcast.

“It’s too bad because there were some really seminal moments in that six-week trial that people should have heard and they’re lost now in history because that wasn’t allowed. If there’s another high-profile, similar case, I think the public would benefit from hearing the kind of in-court action that I saw first-hand in that case,” said Jones, who served in the US. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and presided over Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.