oral arguments

[James Spriggs]

I am responding to Larry Rosenthal's inquiry about oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court.  My colleagues (Paul J. Wahlbeck and Timothy Johnson) and I have conducted research on the role of oral arguments at the Court, asking such questions as the following:  which attorneys provide better arguments at orals (and in what cases), does the quality of oral argumentation influence the outcomes of cases, and do the justices' rely on the questions asked by colleagues at orals to figure out the lay of the land in a case?  We have a forthcoming article in the Washington University Law Review that addresses those types of empirical questions.  

A draft of this paper can be download from the following site: http://polisci.wustl.edu/sub_page.php?s=3&m=0&d=83

In addition, you can obtain audio files for oral arguments (and other great information about the Court) at http://www.oyez.org/.  



For a course I will teach next fall that will examine modes of argument in constitutional law, modeled on a course I took all too many years ago from Archibald Cox, I would like to provide students with a selection of briefs and oral arguments (transcripts or even audiotapes, if available).  I would be most grateful if list members could point me to cases involving questions of constitutional law, preferably in the United States Supreme Court, that were particularly well briefed or argued.  Off list replies would be fine.
 
Larry Rosenthal
Chapman University School of Law

-- 
James F. Spriggs II
Professor of Political Science
Professor of Law (by courtesy)
Fellow, Center for Empirical Research in Law 
Washington University in St. Louis
One Brookings Drive
Eliot 334
St. Louis, MO 63130
phone: (314)935.8580
FAX: (314) 935.5856
jspriggs at artsci.wustl.edu