Balkinization  

Monday, May 04, 2020

Supreme Court by Telephone

Jason Mazzone

I listened today to the Supreme Court’s first ever telephonic oral argument, in USPTO v. Booking.com. It took me a few minutes to realize why the format, radically different from that normally in place, nonetheless seemed very familiar. It was because the session sounded just like a law school moot court competition: the rehearsed opening statements, possibly read from scripts (I heard some rustling); a small number of gentle questions delivered slowly as though to an audience hard of hearing; ample opportunity for counsel to answer; little by way of follow up; almost no interruptions; politeness through and through; and the judges taking turns. Casual listeners would have been impressed: so orderly! And learned a lot: in contrast to in-court arguments, following along today did not require having read the briefs in advance. We have nine more of these telephone arguments to go so perhaps the Justices will find their groove. But if this first case is indicative it is hard to imagine they will get much out of the telephone arguments—nothing, in any event, that they couldn’t find in the briefs. Still, it is an interesting experiment and the Court seems to have planned things quite well even if we are left wondering how the Chief Justice ever got stuck with operating the stopwatch.           

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