“Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.” — Woodrow Wilson
Public access to court proceedings is important to keeping the public informed about what goes on in the courts; it serves the purposes of 1) educating the public (and members of the legal profession as well) about the law and legal procedure and their proper (and improper) application; and 2) enabling the public to hold the judiciary (which is funded by public tax funds) accountable for its actions and inactions.
If ever public divorce court proceedings were to be treated as “private,” that would be the moment at which 1) the quality and integrity of the work the judges and commissioners and attorneys would inevitably start to decline; and 2) public trust in the legal profession would necessarily decline even more. Public accountability is necessary to ensure judges and commissioners (and to a lesser extent, attorneys) do not exceed their authority or abuse/misuse it in other ways and to help ensure that incompetent and corrupt judges and commissioners are discovered.