Oral Arguments Before The Supreme Court

When the Supreme Court decides a case, the litigants make an oral presentation. This is the only public part in the steps in the Court's decision, so it provides an important window into its decision-making processes. Using transcripts, the author examines how the oral arguments work, and their effect on the Court's decisions.

How oral arguments influence the decisions of Supreme Court justices.

Oral arguments are a key aspect of the Supreme Court's decision-making process

When the Supreme Court decides a case, the litigants make an oral presentation. This is the only public part in the steps in the Court's decision, so it provides an important window into its decision-making processes. Using transcripts, the author examines how the oral arguments work, and their effect on the Court's decisions.

While legal scholars, psychologists, and political scientists commonly voice their skepticism over the influence oral arguments have on the Court’s voting pattern, this book offers a contrarian position focused on close scrutiny of the justices’ communication within oral arguments. Malphurs examines the rhetoric, discourse, and subsequent decision-making within the oral arguments for significant Supreme Court cases, visiting their potential power and danger and revealing the rich dynamic nature of the justices’ interactions among themselves and the advocates. In addition to offering advancements in scholars’ understanding of oral arguments, this study introduces Sensemaking as an alternative to rational decision-making in Supreme Court arguments, suggesting a new model of judicial decision-making to account for the communication within oral arguments that underscores a glaring irony surrounding the bulk of related research—the willingness of scholars to criticize oral arguments but their unwillingness to study this communication. With the growing accessibility of the Court’s oral arguments and the inevitable introduction of television cameras in the courtroom, this book offers new theoretical and methodological perspectives at a time when scholars across the fields of communication, law, psychology, and political science will direct even greater attention and scrutiny toward the Supreme Court.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, this definitive resource presents complete transcripts of the original oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, featuring the contributions of Thurgood Marshal, Hugo Black, and Felix Frankfurter, as well as introductory essays exploring the significance of the decision.