Never seen on camera and rarely heard on audiotape from inside the courtroom, the Supreme Court’s justices have opened up their sometimes mysterious proceedings with the release of audio recordings from this week’s oral arguments.

The recordings themselves have been going on for more than half-a-century but with only a handful of exceptions they never been released so soon after the arguments.

The new policy. first implemented Friday, is likely designed as an attempt by the court to become more open and transparent about its business especially as calls for live television coverage of oral arguments persist on Capitol Hill.

Now posted on the Supreme Court’s website is the audio link to this week’s seven cases.

At the 13:50 mark of this link you can hear Justice Elena Kagan’s first question from the bench.

By clicking this argument link from Tuesday you can hear Justice Antonin Scalia’s well-known but seldom heard wit @ 42:15 in talking about the security of a NASA facility in California.

And this link here will take you to the arguments in the much-publicized case involving the Westboro Baptist Church and its picket of a Marine’s funeral in 2006.