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Modern Love

25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry

The popular column, which began in 2004, has become a podcast, a book and an Amazon Prime streaming series. Here are some of its greatest hits.

By Daniel Jones

Whether you’re new to Modern Love or a longtime fan, we think you’ll enjoy this collection of some of our most memorable essays. You’ll find some of our most read and most shared of all time, and others that really got readers talking (and tweeting, and sharing). We present, in no particular order, the quirky, the profound, the head scratching and the heartbreaking. (A handful of these essays and dozens more of our most memorable columns can also be found in the Modern Love anthology .)

To keep up on all things Modern Love — our weekly essays, podcast episodes and batches of Tiny Love Stories, along with other relationship-based reads from The Times — sign up for Love Letter , a weekly email. And check out the “Modern Love” television series , based on this column, on Amazon Prime Video.

1. No Sound, No Fury, No Marriage

By Laura Pritchett

After her peaceful marriage quietly dissolves, a woman comes to appreciate the vitality of conflict and confrontation.

2. Sometimes, It’s Not You, or the Math

By Sara Eckel

He didn’t care that I was 39 and hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in eight years.

3. Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me

By Katie Heaney

A young woman seeks answers to her sexual orientation online, where the endless quizzes she takes deliver whatever label she wants.

4. First I Met My Children. Then My Girlfriend. They’re Related.

By Aaron Long

A former sperm donor, searching online, finds both offspring and love. 

5. What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage

By Amy Sutherland

I wanted — needed — to nudge my husband a little closer to perfect.

6. The 12-Hour Goodbye That Started Everything

By Miriam Johnson

A spurned woman confronts the question: When you lose love, should you even try to get over it?

7. During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered

By Andrew Rannells

On one of the most consequential evenings of his life, a young man still finding himself wishes he had picked up the phone.

8. Let’s Meet Again in Five Years

By Karen B. Kaplan

They thought college was too soon for lifelong love, so they scheduled their next date for a little later — 60 months.

9. My Body Doesn’t Belong to You

By Heather Burtman

A young woman who finds herself being catcalled, followed and grabbed at wonders why some men seem to think a female body is public property.

10. Making a Marriage Magically Tidy

By Helen Ellis

At her husband’s suggestion (and with the wisdom of Marie Kondo), a recovering slob discovers the sexiness of cleanliness.

11. Loved and Lost? It’s O.K., Especially if You Win

By Veronica Chambers

It’s O.K. to fall deeply for one loser after another. It’s O.K. to show up at a guy’s house with a dozen roses and declare your undying affection.

12. To Stay Married, Embrace Change

By Ada Calhoun

It’s unrealistic to expect your spouse to forever remain the same person you fell in love with.

13. After 264 Haircuts, a Marriage Ends

By William Dameron

He acknowledged he was gay and left his wife, but he kept returning home for their monthly ritual.

14. In the Waiting Room of Estranged Spouses

By Benjamin Hertwig

An ex-soldier, rocked by infidelity, finds hope in a chance meeting with a mother and her young son.

15. What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity

By Karin Jones

A divorced woman seeking no-strings-attached liaisons learns a sobering lesson about men and marriage.

16. Sharing a Cab, and My Toes

By Julia Anne Miller

During a taxi ride home a co-worker makes a surprising request.

17. On Tinder, Off Sex

By Ali Rachel Pearl

Living a life where secondary abstinence isn’t exactly a first choice.

18. No Labels, No Drama, Right?

By Jordana Narin

The winner of the 2015 Modern Love college essay contest, who was then a sophomore at Columbia University, writes about her generation’s reluctance to define relationships.

19. Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

By Laura A. Munson

“I don’t love you anymore,” my husband said, but I survived the sucker punch.

20. You May Want to Marry My Husband

By Amy Krouse Rosenthal

After learning she doesn’t have long to live, a woman composes a dating profile for the man she will leave behind.

21. Somewhere Inside, a Path to Empathy

By David Finch

A man learns to deal with Asperger’s syndrome, with the help of his wife.

22. My Husband Is Now My Wife

By Diane Daniel

He took the first step in becoming a woman: surgery to help his face look more feminine.

23. Would My Heart Outrun Its Pursuer?

By Gary Presley

How might a woman love the millstone I believed myself to be?

24. When Eve and Eve Bit the Apple

By Kristen Scharold

A Christian woman’s identity is challenged by her love for church and another woman.

25. To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This

By Mandy Len Catron

What happens if you decide that falling in love is not something that happens to you, but something that you do?

Daniel Jones is the editor of Modern Love.

Modern Love can be reached at [email protected] .

Want more? Watch the trailer for the Modern Love TV show ; read past Modern Love columns and Tiny Love Stories ; listen to the Modern Love Podcast on iTunes , Spotify or Google Play Music ; check out the updated anthology “ Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption ;” and follow Modern Love on Facebook .

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Modern Love, Revised and Updated: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption Paperback – September 3, 2019

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• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Crown
• Publication date September 3, 2019
• Dimensions 5.16 x 0.63 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 0593137043
• ISBN-13 978-0593137048
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown; Updated edition (September 3, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593137043
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593137048
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.16 x 0.63 x 8 inches
• #350 in Dating (Books)
• #572 in Essays (Books)
• #1,082 in Love & Romance (Books)

About the authors

Deborah copaken.

DEBORAH COPAKEN is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, she was also a TV writer on "Emily in Paris," performer (The Moth, etc.), and a former Emmy Award-winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match, among others. Her column, “When Cupid is a Prying Journalist,” was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Daniel Jones

Daniel Jones has edited the Modern Love column in The New York Times since its launch in 2004. His books include “Love Illuminated: Exploring Life's Most Mystifying Subject with the Help of 50,000 Strangers,” “The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explore Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Freedom, and Fatherhood,” and a novel, “After Lucy,” which was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. His new book, "Modern Love," is an anthology of many of the best Modern Love columns from the past 15 years. Jones appears weekly on the Modern Love podcast and is consulting producer for Amazon Studios’ show “Modern Love.” He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and in New York City.

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The 8 Best 'Modern Love' Essays

Isn't it a fantastic feeling when you stumble upon a column that makes you think, "I can't believe I survived without these stories in my life"? Ever since I read my first New York Times "Modern Love" essay, I was hooked by the series' concept of meditations on connection. The New York Times began publishing essays on the subject, written exclusively by NYT readers, in 2004. However, the series has experienced an upswing in popularity in recent months. This is mostly due to the excellently-produced Modern Love podcast (from WBUR) that's been around since January of this year. In each episode, a talented actor brings a favorite "Modern Love" article to life . Listening to an episode is a great way to freshen up your commute, or provide a soundtrack to your afternoon walk.

But with all these essays, podcasts, and even a Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales book out there, I sometimes feel like there's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to "Modern Love." How on earth am I supposed to pick the best stories? Since I know I'm not the only one with this problem, I dug into the "Modern Love" archives from the past three years and picked eight of my favorite stories from 2014-2016. Whether you're a newcomer to the series or you've been a longtime fan, you'll enjoy this assortment of essays on all kinds of unlikely love.

1. Just One Last Swirl Around the Bowl

Dave Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of the New York Times' "This Land" column , wrote this essay about his daughter's dying fish. One of the few Modern Love pieces that isn't about romantic love, the essay explores his memories of his parents' deaths, and how he tried to care for them as best as he knew how during their final days. While his daughter comes to terms with the fish's imminent death, Barry, too, reflects on what it means to watch someone you love die.

You can also listen to Jason Alexander read this on the Modern Love podcast , and he does a bang-up job.

2. All Twisted Up by Genderbending

Delacey Skinner doesn't know what to think when she discovers that her ex-boyfriend is dating a trans woman. This information causes Skinner to question her own identity as a woman. She's never felt particularly comfortable in her femininity, so what does it mean that her ex now has a relationship with someone who presents herself as far more traditionally feminine than Skinner herself ever has? Skinner's essay is a poignant and thought-provoking take on gender identity.

3. Putting Love to the Stress Test

What happens when you meet a person so scarily similar to yourself that you assume something has to go wrong? In this essay, Jasmine Jaksic signs up for OkCupid and finds a man who's answered almost every question on the site in the same way as her. Since she and her new beau are both software developers, they decide to implement a real-life version of the "stress test," which is the practice of testing a computer program to its limits. What Jaksic discovers during the four weeks of their stress test changes the way she thinks about the necessities of a relationship.

4. Sharing a Cab, and My Toes

After abandoning her life as an academic, Julia Anne Miller fulfills her decades-long dream of moving to New York City. While working as a writer for a test-prep company, she sets out to explore the city. Each of her coworkers nurses an artistic dream, and the test-prep job is only a way to pay the bills. Miller's dream: to perform. One night, she shares a cab ride home with a coworker, leading to a bizarre sexual experience. This forms the basis of her eloquent meditation on what it means to get what you want.

5. One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please

This stunning and lyrical essay will make you smell tulips and lilies as you're reading. Written by Alisha Gorder, it tells the story of Gorder's time at a floral shop, arranging and selling bouquets to people trying to communicate with their loved ones through flowers. People often send commonplace messages with their bouquets, such as "Happy Birthday" (H.B.), "Happy Anniversary" (H.A.), and "Thinking of You" (T.O.Y.). But sometimes, what they're trying to say isn't so simple. Gorder weaves those anecdotes into the fabric of her own life: when she was 18, her boyfriend of two years killed himself, and she was forced to learn an agonizing lesson about love.

6. One Thousand and One Nights of Laundry

Wendy Rasmussen, the author of this melancholy reflection on love and loss, married an Iraqi refugee and then divorced him. Her essay captures an episode of her life in which she went to his house with their sons to do laundry, since she didn't have a working laundry machine. One night, her drunk ex-husband told her a story about escaping from Iraq by crossing the Saudi Arabian deserts, and about the man he left behind in the sand. Rasmussen's essay is subtle, but evocative, and it's a read you won't forget.

7. Finding My Own Rescuer

Anna March brings us this story about the love of her life, a man disabled in a car accident when he was 16. Though he has to use a wheelchair, Adam is anything but helpless: he can cook, walk the dogs, and drive, and he helps keep March's life in order when they move in together. But their new house has more than one story, and while they're waiting for the proper ramps to be installed, the tables turn in their relationship. Now March is the one caring for him - and she doesn't know if she's up to the task.

8. No Labels, No Drama, Right?

This is the essay that made me start following "Modern Love" - mostly because I've seen the exact same story play out in my friends' lives so many times. The author, Jordana Narin, writes about the man who occupied the space between friend and boyfriend for so long that she hardly knew how to handle her relationship with him - especially because, as a Millennial and college student, she didn't know how to admit her feelings. If you've tried to navigate the muddy waters of hookup culture, this is an essay that will resonate with you.

Images: Caleb Ekeroth , Brenda Helen , Luis Llerena, Daria Sukhorukova , Kai Oberhäuser , freestocks.org /Unsplash; jill111 , Unsplash , ferobanjo /Pixabay

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Part I: You May Want to Marry My Husband

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• Caitlin O'Keefe

On Valentine's Day almost two years ago, Amy Krouse Rosenthal finished writing an essay that would eventually be published in the Modern Love column, called "You May Want to Marry My Husband." Just ten days after the piece came out, she died of ovarian cancer. Her essay became one of the most widely read in the history of the column.

This past summer, her husband Jason wrote his own piece in response. On February 13, we will release that episode. But this week, actress Debra Winger reads Amy's original essay, "You May want to Marry My Husband."

Caitlin O'Keefe Producer, Podcasts & New Programs Caitlin O'Keefe was a producer of podcasts and new programming at WBUR.

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Modern Love and Intimacy: A discussion on individualized love and relationships using the works of Giddens, Bauman and Illouz

This paper aims to discuss the dynamics of romantic relationships with a sociological approach by comparing pre-modern love and modern relationships in the era of individualization. The works of Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman and Eva Illouz are examined and discussed to better understand the frailty of modern human relationships and what it means to society.

Related Papers

Ari Engelberg

Maciej Musiał

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Helga Eggebø

Marriages of convenience have become a central concern in political debates about immigration policy. According to Norwegian regulations, the right to marriage migration only applies to ‘real’ relationships. The notion of a real or genuine marriage, as opposed to a marriage of convenience, raises the question of what characterises a legitimate intimate relationship. Based on interviews with the parties involved, this article investigates how marriage migrants and their partners perceive the application process for marriage migration to Norway, and how they are affected by the idea of marriages of convenience. It argues that the scholarly literature on contemporary intimate relationships is relevant to studies of migration and provides important insights into the narratives of marriage migrants and their partners. On the one hand, ‘the pure relationship’ seems to be one standard against which cross-border marriages are sometimes judged. On the other hand, the ideal of the pure relationship is also used by marriage migrants and their partners to question immigration regulations. The pure relationship is one, but far from the only, normative ideal present in the narratives of my interviewees. Interviewees draw on several different, and sometimes contradictory, norms, ideals and narratives of intimacy when they talk about and justify their own relationships, after being confronted with the immigration regulation's requirement for a ‘real marriage’.

Science and Society. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference (February 16, 2018). – Hamilton, Canada: Accent Graphics Communications & Publishing, 2018. – P. 104−108.

Petro Denysko

The article studies the character of personal identity of the parties in pure relationships. Such personal identity is not a coherent and integrated whole, as it seems to Anthony Giddens, but rather fragmented, unstable and context-dependent set of commodified and externalized self-definitions.

Julia Carter

Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. Ed. V. de Munck. Westport: Praeger.

Charles Lindholm

The repudiation of intense and idealized personal romantic relationships in favor of pragmatic ties of mutual sexual satisfaction may have unforeseen consequences. A lack of commitment in love, within the modern context in which alternative forms of idealized attachment are weak or absent, may lead not to self-actualization (whatever that amorphous term may mean), but to a pervasive feeling of isolation, depression and insignificance. This state of mind in turn is conducive to the loss of the self in the anonymity of the group; a loss which may be rationalized by any number of intellectual superstructures, but which really gains its appeal because it offers the sensation of transcendence that is absent in the world at large, and no longer to be found in romantic idealization.

Postmodern Openings 7 (1), 35-54

Cătălina-Ionela Rezeanu

The last decades have seen a growing trend towards researching intimacy. A considerable amount of literature has been published based on the reflexive transformation of intimacy framework. This paper starts from the premise that, recently, more and more scholars have criticized the idea that detraditionalization and individualization led to the transformation of intimacy during reflexive modernity (late modernity). Critics question the ability of late modernity concepts to offer a cross-cultural and nuanced image of contemporary particularities of private life and intimate relations. The purpose of this study is to show the current state of knowledge in the social sciences on individualization thesis and detraditionalization thesis, the main theoretical criticisms of the two theses and conceptual alternatives to them. To achieve these goals, we conducted an interpretive synthesis of 16 articles from international literature, published between 1999-2014, in the thematic area of social changes brought by late modernity into the domain of private life and intimacy. In the Introduction section, we briefly present the two theses as reflected in the two of the most cited books on these themes: The Transformations of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Giddens, 1992) and The Normal Chaos of Love (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). In the body of the paper, we synthesize the arguments sustaining the criticism of the two theses and show some conceptual alternatives to these criticisms, as stated in the literature. In the concluding section, we resume the main arguments to open directions for future studies.

Current Sociology

Sasha Roseneil , Shelley Budgeon

Emma Louise Daglish

This dissertation explores the current forms of intimacy and their position within society. It will specifically focus on whether casual sex types, such as Friends-with-Benefits, are slowly outdating romantic exclusivity. A critical evaluation of three predominant theories relating to intimacy and relationships (Giddens, 1992; Bauman, 2003 and; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995) will be followed by a discussion and definition of the sociological, historical and anthropological construct of love and finally a sociological evaluation of sex. The primary research is a small-scale (n=71) questionnaire-based study, intended to examine attitudinal changes towards romantic love and casual sex. It found that there were many contradictions in respondents’ attitudes towards relationship-type, and that while casual sex was highly prevalent in the sample, romantic commitment (preferably loving) was the desired relationship.

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NYT Modern Love essayist navigates her grief with support from Walpole writing group

Writing can be a lonely activity, and you could say the same thing about processing grief. But Tina Hedin of Keene found community in a local writing group. It’s there that she started working on an essay about her grief after her daughter’s death. That essay recently appeared in the New York Times’ Modern Love section.

NHPR's Morning Edition host Rick Ganley spoke with Hedin about how writing can connect people who are grieving.

Your essay's called "We Didn't Know It Was the Last Time." Can you tell us about the essay for listeners who have not read that yet?

I think of it as an essay where the past and the present are happening at the same time. In my own experience of grief, that's a state that I find myself in a lot – where I'm in the present, but memories of the past are triggered by some little event and come rushing back.

And that's what happened the day that I'm describing in the story. I was at the gym. I saw a young woman there who reminded me of my daughter. It was Christmas season. I saw a picture on my phone that day taken of my daughter, and it took me back so vividly to the last days that we were together with her, and I describe that in my story.

And the experience of writing about that made me reflect on a more universal experience. Often we don't get a chance to know when something is the last time, when it's the last time we're with our loved one. Or we do something that we think is ordinary, and then in retrospect, it's incredibly precious and special because it will never happen again.

Writing isn't your job professionally, but you belong to a Walpole writing group. How did that help you navigate your grief after your daughter Kiki died?

I didn't expect to share the things that I was writing initially, but I did have a place to share them with my group. And as the months went by and I did get feedback from others, I realized that sharing my writing with other people who have experienced grief could give others what I got from reading.

Initially, after Kiki died, I was just desperate to find writing by others who had gone through the loss of a child, who were experiencing that kind of grief, and I was in hopes of feeling a connection, feeling not alone in this terrible experience.

What's been the response from readers to your essay? The New York Times obviously has a huge reach.

It's been pretty mind blowing for me. I woke up at 3 a.m. in the morning that it came out, too excited to sleep. And I went online, and I saw that I already had emails from Switzerland, and Dubai and the Netherlands – people around the world that had read it. At this point, I'm still trying to work my way through them.

Many of them are from parents who have lost a child. Many of them are from people experiencing grief and loss. Our grief is universal. Each loss is unique and precious to that person. And I really do feel honored that so many people have taken the time to reach out, especially considering that that was my hope in writing in the first place – was to connect with other people.

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The Historic Trump Court Cases That We Cannot See

By Neal Katyal

Over the past month, in two courtrooms some two hundred and fifty miles apart, the government was hearing arguments in two of the most consequential court cases in American history. In New York, at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, a judge was presiding over the first criminal trial of a former U.S. President. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., at the United States Supreme Court, the nine Justices were mulling over a grave question of constitutional law—whether a former President is immune from criminal prosecution.

The two courtrooms could hardly be more different, with the polished white marble of the U.S. Supreme Court contrasting with the more ramshackle wooden court furnishings in Manhattan. And yet both rooms are similarly opaque, with most Americans unable to see what’s happening inside of either one. Cameras are prohibited, and so the only way to observe the proceedings is to wait in line outside, in hopes of snagging one of the few seats reserved for members of the public. (The Supreme Court saves room for fifty public spectators; the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse has been able to accommodate around ten.) This is despite the fact that the American people pay for these courtrooms with their tax dollars, and the fact that prosecutions are brought in their name. The New York case is called the People v. Donald J. Trump.

Like grownups who abstain from tequila because of a bad experience with it in high school, the bans on cameras are the lingering effects of some early issues with courtroom photography. In 1935, Bruno Hauptmann was put on trial in New Jersey for kidnapping and murdering the nearly two-year-old son of the aviator Charles Lindbergh. At that trial, cameras were allowed under certain conditions: they could film during trial recesses but not while witnesses were testifying. And yet camera footage of the trial testimony leaked, and Hauptmann’s trial became a media circus. This defiance of court restrictions, paired with the bright flashes in the courtroom and the general mayhem caused by the cameramen, ultimately led the trial judge to ban photography for the rest of the proceedings. Many states followed suit.

Once television became ubiquitous, in the nineteen-fifties, the prohibitions on cameras began to seem antiquated. Some states rolled back their anti-camera legislation, and, today, most permit some form of audiovisual coverage in court, whether it be still photography during testimony, audio recordings, or live broadcasts on television. Federal appellate courts, too, permit live broadcasts, as does the International Criminal Court. But not so New York. In 1952, the state adopted a statute still in place today, banning all cameras in the courtroom—a law so broad that one court-reform organization, the Fund for Modern Courts, has called it “an extreme outlier among the states.” The U.S. Supreme Court, for its part, prohibits cameras but makes live audio of oral arguments available. That puts the Court in better audiovisual stead than New York, and yet there’s a lot that happens in court that cannot be captured by either audio or transcript.

As a member of the Supreme Court bar, I was able to sit at the front of the courtroom for the arguments in Trump v. United States, the Presidential-immunity case. I could see Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s face twist into an expression of utter incredulity as Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer claimed that a President sending a Navy SEAL team to assassinate a political rival was not an indictable crime. I was able to watch Michael Dreeben, the lawyer for the special counsel Jack Smith, painstakingly describe the counts in one of the federal indictments against Trump, relating to his abuse of the Justice Department. Dreeben outlined how Trump tried to pressure top Justice Department officials into sending letters to state legislatures expressing doubt about the election counts, and how Trump threatened to fire those officials if they didn’t comply. After Dreeben relayed this information, almost two hours into the proceedings, I could see the Court dynamics shift. The Justices began to listen far more closely to him, sitting up in their chairs.

I’ve personally seen more than four hundred oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Why bother trudging all the way to One First Street when I could just listen to audio recordings or read a transcript? Because neither is any sort of substitute for watching the way in which these arguments are delivered, and for observing the dynamics on display in the courtroom. The Court itself isn’t satisfied with just reading a bunch of written words in briefs; it insists on seeing advocates deliver their arguments in person. More than fifty Americans should get that same basic opportunity.

The judiciary is the least democratic of the three branches of the government. Supreme Court Justices, who have lifetime tenure, are appointed, not elected. And so they are required to justify their decisions in ways that elected officials are not. President Joe Biden can sign an executive order without explaining his reasoning behind it. (It might cause a P.R. crisis, but it’s certainly within his power to do this.) By contrast, when the Justices overturn a longtime legal precedent, or when they create a new one, whether major or minor, they must issue written opinions explaining their decision-making process. This process might be as significant as the opinion itself. Oral arguments are, undoubtedly, a major part of that process, and yet most Americans are barely even aware that oral arguments are happening—let alone what arguments are being made—creating a situation in which the public receives a pile of controversial opinions, every June, with little context. One can imagine that if oral arguments were televised, Americans might spend the year doing what the Justices do: thinking through a bunch of complicated, nuanced questions before ultimately reaching their own conclusions.

The Court today is relying far too much on the idea that Americans are going to seek out audio feeds of oral arguments. This is unrealistic in an age of TV and Instagram. It’s not 1936, and Americans aren’t huddled around a radio in the family room. Without the visual component, it is unlikely that they are going to pay attention to the arguments in a Supreme Court case, even if the decision that’s eventually rendered may directly affect their lives. It would serve the Court well for Americans to be confronted with the same questions that are raised during oral arguments. It would also serve Americans well to see how the Court, which is increasingly seen as a politically motivated entity, is genuinely grappling with questions about governance, such as how to draw the line between an official Presidential act (like appointing a Cabinet member), and a private one (like taking a bribe from said Cabinet member).

The public is missing even more when it comes to Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, which, ironically, is all about whether Trump committed crimes in his efforts to keep information from the American people, in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election. Last week, the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels went on the stand and told the full story of her relationship with Trump, from their initial sexual encounter, in 2006, to the hush-money agreement that she negotiated with Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen some ten years later. We were unable to watch her tell it, or to watch how she handled being cross-examined, in the same way that we were unable to watch Hope Hicks, a witness called by the government, tearfully testify about her old boss, or the former tabloid C.E.O. David Pecker speak to the dozens of stories that the National Enquirer has killed about Trump and other politicians over the years. We can read quotes published online, but it is much harder, from behind our computer screens, to read between the lines. Did Hope Hicks start crying because she felt bad about turning on Trump, or because she was overwhelmed by the trial, or because of something else? Different reporters have had different takes, but we’ve been denied the opportunity to watch her testimony and decide for ourselves. And, of course, we’ve been unable to observe the behavior of the defendant, Donald Trump: how he comports himself in the room, how he reacts to the testimony of witnesses, how he carries himself, and so much more. (Just imagine how different the O. J. Simpson “gloves don’t fit” testimony would have been, had it been reduced to a transcript—or even a highly descriptive newspaper article.) Journalists have done their best to describe what’s happening in the room, and yet even the most faithful retellings can be subjective, skewed by something as simple as where the writer was sitting in the courtroom, and what kind of view they may have had. Some reports, for example, say that Trump keeps falling asleep during the trial; others disagree.

On Monday, Cohen is on the stand—more important testimony that we will not see. There’s also a chance, albeit a small one, that Trump himself will eventually testify in the New York trial. If he does, the American people will not be able to witness some of the most significant trial testimony given in our lifetimes. And if he does not testify, cameras would be the only way for us to see Trump’s true reaction to the case being presented against him. Instead, the lack of cameras has catalyzed a lopsided spin cycle outside the courtroom. Trump leaves the courtroom each day, where the reporters waiting outside for him do have cameras, and he characterizes the proceedings in a gravely slanted way, which then gets broadcast on cable news. The lawyers for the prosecution cannot publicly grandstand like this; rules of prosecutorial ethics require them to make their arguments inside the courtroom, not outside of it. The result is a structural asymmetry, which isn’t just confined to the two sides of the court case. The characters appearing on the witness stand, from Daniels to Cohen, are all subject to innuendo and character attacks, with the public unable to fact-check how these individuals are portrayed by the media. The same goes for the Supreme Court. Don’t believe what I said about Justice Barrett’s facial expression during oral arguments? Tough luck, you can’t go back and check the video, because there isn’t one.

Even if one accepts these rules for a normal trial, you’d think that there’d be an exception for ones that are so clearly in the public interest. Trump is not just a former President but a candidate for President, and twenty-four per cent of Republicans say they would not vote for him if he were convicted of a felony by a jury. The immunity case, too, is of grave concern to the public, as the Justices are essentially deciding whether Trump’s other trials should move forward. The risk is of a double darkness—that a Supreme Court the American public cannot see will render a decision preventing Americans from even hearing the rest of evidence against Trump, by stopping his trials from taking place altogether.

What possible rationale can there be for having a courtroom placed out of view of the people who paid for it? To be sure, confidentiality is sometimes required, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to the modern-day jury room. But courtroom proceedings are, by their nature, meant to be transparent, centered on a fact-gathering and argumentation process. Expecting cameras in the courtroom is not unlike expecting body cameras to be worn by police officers, who, like judges, are sworn to uphold the rule of law.

Some fear that courtroom cameras will prompt witnesses to be intimidated and scared. I understand this concern; indeed, I once shared it. From 2020 to 2023, I was privileged to serve as special prosecutor in one of the most high-profile trials in modern history, the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd . Up until this case, Minnesota had never televised a criminal trial. As prosecutors in the case, and in accordance with Minnesota law and practice, we requested that cameras be forbidden. We feared, in particular, for the safety and comfort of a seventeen-year-old witness, who had taken the video of Floyd’s murder.

The judge, fortunately, overruled us. Americans were able to see, with their own eyes, what happened in that courtroom. They could see the evidence that both sides were able to muster, examine Chauvin’s demeanor in court, and assess the credibility of the on-the-scene witnesses and medical experts. The result was public confidence in the outcome of the trial. When Chauvin was ultimately convicted, there were no mass riots or protests, despite speculation beforehand that either outcome would result in unrest. The trial underscored the importance of courtroom cameras, just as the initial video of Floyd’s murder, recorded by that young witness, was critical in drawing public attention to the incident in the first place.

There have been concerns, too, that televised legal proceedings create perverse incentives for lawyers and judges, who may be tempted to play for the public, and distort the truth-seeking function of the court. That is a possibility, although the democratic benefits strongly outweigh that risk, just as they do for Congress (televised) and the President (extensively televised). And the reverse is more likely, as courtroom participants are incentivized to act with greater care when their actions will be viewable by millions. In 2017, I argued against President Trump’s Muslim ban in the federal appeals court in Seattle, and the oral argument was covered on live television. If anything, the cameras induced us attorneys to be even more conscious of keeping the proceedings solemn. Ultimately, cameras would allow Americans to see what I get to see when I am in court: a bunch of judges who are trying their hardest to resolve difficult cases in a straightforward and honest way. Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, is a perfect example. Those in the courtroom describe an even-keeled and balanced judge, but Trump goes out every day blasting him as a biased accomplice of President Biden. Televised proceedings would empower Americans to make these judgments for themselves.

The mechanism to fix all of this is not difficult to implement. Changing the rules in New York would likely require the state legislature to lift its ban on cameras, although it is conceivable that a court may try to do so on its own, as Minnesota did in the Chauvin case. Televising Supreme Court arguments would not even require legislation; it could be done by mere Court rule. And, should the Court not act, legislation has been introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin to force them to do so. The bill, known as the Cameras in the Courtroom Act, would require the Supreme Court to permit television coverage of oral arguments and other open sessions. It’s accompanied by another bill, the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act, which extends to all open federal court proceedings. Both bills are pieces of bipartisan legislation; Grassley and Durbin don’t agree on much, but they agree on this. Even the Justices themselves have, in other contexts, recognized the importance of governmental transparency in a democracy. The person who famously said that sunlight is the best disinfectant was none other than Justice Louis Brandeis. ♦

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