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 — 7 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.
Back to the History of the Court reading room, or browse the justice-by-justice shelves. A link means we verified a place to find the book; where none is shown, we could not verify one rather than guess.