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Full-Text Articles in Law
May It Please The Court: Questions About Policy At Oral Argument, Cynthia K. Conlon, Julie M. Karaba
May It Please The Court: Questions About Policy At Oral Argument, Cynthia K. Conlon, Julie M. Karaba
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
This Article examines the questions that Supreme Court Justices ask during oral argument. The authors content-coded questions asked in fifty-three cases argued during the October 2009, 2010, and 2011 terms—a total of 5,115 questions. They found that the Justices vary significantly in the extent to which they ask about different aspects of a case, including threshold issues, precedent, facts, external actors, legal argument, and policy. They also found that the Justices were more likely to ask policy-oriented questions in education cases than in constitutional cases that did not arise in a school setting. The authors included a case study of …
Partiality And Disclosure In Supreme Court Opinions, Robert F. Nagel
Partiality And Disclosure In Supreme Court Opinions, Robert F. Nagel
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
This Essay begins by identifying the various kinds of partiality the Justices of the Supreme Court can have in the cases they decide. Although there is widespread recognition of the influence these biases might have, for the most part the Justices continue to write opinions as if they (and other judges) were entirely disinterested. This practice is often thought to be justified as a source of judicial legitimacy, but there are a number of reasons to doubt that a pretense of impersonality is actually important for maintaining respect for the Court. Consequently, the possibility has to be considered that the …