Daily Inspiration Quote by Lance Ito

A judge claiming he has not had the chance to "evaluate the impact of cameras in the courtroom" is the kind of procedural understatement that doubles as a quiet act of self-protection. Lance Ito did not say cameras are harmful or helpful; he said he has not "fully" evaluated them. The phrasing is a legal airbag: it absorbs responsibility while sounding careful, even high-minded. In a profession built on the authority of decisive rulings, this is conspicuously noncommittal.

The context does a lot of the heavy lifting. Ito is inseparable from the O.J. Simpson trial, the televised courtroom spectacle that turned evidentiary disputes into daytime drama and elevated lawyers into celebrities. Against that backdrop, "opportunity" reads as wryly evasive. If the most watched trial of the century doesn't qualify as a data set, what does? The sentence is less about empirical uncertainty than about the politics of acknowledging what everyone can see: cameras change behavior. They encourage performance, sharpen incentives for grandstanding, and make every judicial decision feel like it has an audience beyond the jury.

Subtextually, Ito is asserting judicial neutrality while navigating institutional reputational risk. Admitting cameras distort proceedings would sound like an admission that the court lost control; praising them would invite the charge that justice is entertainment. So he reaches for the safest posture: studied agnosticism. It's not ignorance; it's an attempt to keep the robe untarnished in a media ecosystem that, by design, stains everything it touches.