Closed courtrooms

Without bothering to detail why, a U.S. district judge in California on Monday barred the public from a hearing in the ongoing dispute between Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and the backers of ConnectU, a rival social network.

In what was later termed a "misunderstanding," reporters and relatives of a man charged with murdering a California sheriff's deputy were literally locked out of his arraignment on Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Marco Topete is accused in the fatal shooting of a Yolo County deputy during a high-speed chase last week.

An attorney for former model Christie Brinkley's children will ask a judge Thursday to close her impending divorce trial, hoping to keep them from hearing "harm[ful]" details of their parents' split, Newsday reported.

For the seemingly dozenth time in the last few months, yet another move toward secrecy by embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is making headlines. 

The Ninth Circuit earlier this week issued an opinion with what seemed like a pretty straightforward reading of the current state of access law: before a criminal proceeding can be closed to the public and the news media, a judge must find that there is a compelling interest to do so, and that the amount of closure is "narrowly tailored" to satisfy that interest.