The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes the right of the accused to a public trial.
Closures are decided case-by-case by the judge evaluating a claimed danger to a substantial or legitimate public interest.
[5] In other words, a judge who does not want to be reversed on appeal must be confident that there cannot possibly be any alternative to closure that might later be conjured up by some appellate lawyer.
Public trials were usually widely discussed in media and hearings were often arranged in larger auditoria.
The term "show trial" corresponds to Russian "показной процесс" (pokaznoy process).