Shelf 8 of 8 · The Hour in Public
Oral Argument
The only hour of the Court’s work the public gets to watch — what a justice said it was for, what the questions predict, who gets interrupted, and how the whole ritual changed.
The reading list — 17 books
Harlan, John M. What Part Does the Oral Argument Play in the Conduct of an Appeal?. 1955.
Johnson, Timothy R. Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court. 2004.
Scalia, Antonin, and Bryan A. Garner. Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. 2008.
Epstein, Lee, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner. Inferring the Winning Party in the Supreme Court from the Pattern of Questioning at Oral Argument. 2010.
Jacobi, Tonja, and Dylan Schweers. Justice, Interrupted: The Effect of Gender, Ideology, and Seniority at Supreme Court Oral Arguments. 2017.
Jacobi, Tonja, and Matthew Sag. The New Oral Argument: Justices as Advocates. 2019.
Epstein, Lee, and Eric A. Posner. What Is Oral Argument in the Supreme Court For?. 2026.
Irons, Peter, and Stephanie Guitton, eds. May It Please the Court: The Most Significant Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court Since 1955. 1993.
Guitton, Stephanie, and Peter Irons, eds. Arguments on Abortion: Live Recordings and Transcripts of Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Reproductive Rights. 1995.
Friedman, Leon, comp. Obscenity: The Complete Oral Arguments before the Supreme Court in the Major Obscenity Cases. 1970.
Frederick, David C. Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy: Mastering Oral Argument. 2003.
McGuire, Kevin T. The Supreme Court Bar: Legal Elites in the Washington Community. 1993.
Stern, Robert L., et al. Supreme Court Practice: For Practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. 2002.
Gochman, Lisa Sarnoff. At the Altar of the Appellate Gods: Arguing before the US Supreme Court. 2022.
Malphurs, Ryan A. Rhetoric and Discourse in Supreme Court Oral Arguments: Sensemaking in Judicial Decisions. 2013.
Wrightsman, Lawrence S. Oral Arguments Before the Supreme Court: An Empirical Approach. 2008.
Black, Ryan C., Timothy R. Johnson, and Justin Wedeking. Oral Arguments and Coalition Formation on the U.S. Supreme Court: A Deliberate Dialogue. 2012.
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