I love a good project. So when the 2025-26 term began, I had a new one. I decided to try to attend all of the oral arguments for the term, even if I wasn’t covering the case for SCOTUSblog and regardless of how obscure the issue in the case was.
Some of my colleagues in the press room expressed surprise at this plan. One of them asked, skeptically, “Why?” As much as we all love the Supreme Court, they saw it as unnecessary – if not downright masochistic – to attend every single argument session.
The idea behind the project was pretty simple. I wanted to see what I could learn about the justices and their dynamic over the course of the entire term – watching them not just in the high-profile cases when they have many eyes on them, but also in the lower-profile cases in which only a few reporters may be in the room.
Unfortunately, I wound up falling short of my “perfect attendance” goal. I got a nasty cold in January that kept me away from the courtroom, and then I missed a few more arguments after that because of work travel (including FCC v. AT&Tand Blanche v. Lau) and a big opinion release (I’m looking at you, Louisiana v. Callais) that took priority over oral argument. But I think I attended enough oral arguments to draw a few conclusions, which I outline below.
1. The bench has gotten hotter.
For as long as I have been covering the Supreme Court, it has been known as a “hot bench”: The justices ask a lot of questions, using the arguments as opportunities not only to press the lawyers for answers but also to talk to each other (like the TV show “Jeopardy!,” in the form of a question). This “hot bench” is said to date back to Justice Antonin Scalia’s arrival at the court in 1980s, and until the court in 2019 adopted a rule giving arguing lawyers two minutes to make their case without interruption, lawyers could not count on getting more than a sentence out before a justice jumped in with a question or comment (much to Justice Clarence Thomas’ chagrin).
Like so many things, that all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the justices shifted to holding oral arguments over the phone and – to accommodate their new format – asking questions one at a time, in order of seniority.
When the justices returned to the bench after the pandemic, they adopted a hybrid approach – reverting to the free-for-all format that they had used for the time initially allotted to each lawyer, but following the “free for all” with the “round-robin” questioning used during the pandemic. At that point, the hot bench appeared to have cooled off at least a little bit, perhaps because the justices knew that each of them would have an opportunity to ask questions at the end, so they could afford to give the lawyers a little bit more time to finish their answers.
But, four years after the justices’ return to the courtroom, the bench has definitely heated up again. And in particular, the hotter bench this term led to many more of what my colleague Mark Walsh (a hockey player and referee) calls “face-offs” – efforts by more than one justice to speak at the same time. These scenarios usually resolve themselves in one of two ways. There seems to be a norm (unwritten, as so many of the justices’ practices are) that the more junior justice will yield to the more senior justice who wants to speak. And so most of the time, one justice – normally the more junior one – will look at the other and say something along the lines of, “Please, go ahead.” But sometimes, the more senior justice will just keep talking, without acknowledging that a colleague is also trying to speak. Does this reflect frustration with the intense pace of questions and interruptions or just a focus on getting questions out? There’s no way to know for sure, but the former possibility seems entirely plausible.
Sometimes the face-offs need a referee of their own. During the March oral argument in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, in which the court is considering a challenge to the government’s policy of systematically turning back asylum seekers before they reach the U.S. border with Mexico, several justices – including Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett – tried to speak at once, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to say, sharply and loudly, “Please!” Roberts asked his own question first and then called on Justice Elena Kagan (who enjoys seniority over both Barrett and Jackson) to ask the next question.
2. The arguments are often long . . . and there’s no sign of them getting any shorter.
Since the return to the courtroom in the fall of 2021, the arguments have unmistakably gotten longer: each lawyer has his or her allocated time to argue, plus however long the justices take with their “round robin” questions – which, depending on the case, can be substantial. As a result, the general rule that reporters in the press room have adopted to figure out how long an argument will actually last is to take the time allotted for the argument – normally one hour – and double it, especially if there are more than two lawyers arguing.
By all accounts, the lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court like the extended argument format, because it gives them an opportunity to address essentially all of the justices’ questions and concerns. You get the sense, however, that the justices themselves may be less enthusiastic about the longer arguments. This is not just because Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday told an audience at the Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference (a gathering of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and some of the lawyers who practice regularly there) that oral arguments “can go on and on and on and on … past the point where they are contributing to the decision-making process.” It is also because on the days when the court hears arguments in two cases, the justices tend to be less engaged, both during the “free for all” part of the argument and during the round-robin questioning. The second argument often wraps up more or less on time, if not early. Perhaps the justices are thinking about lunch by this point? Or, as the only ones in the room allowed to bring their own drinks (which are sometimes refilled mid-argument) they just need a break?
As with many things at the court, to the extent that the justices are dissatisfied with the current length of arguments, it is entirely within their control. Even if they don’t want to eliminate the round-robin questioning altogether, they could agree to shorten the time that each justice gets to ask questions (which is believed to be approximately five minutes, although, as with so many things concerning the court, this is not memorialized anywhere) during that round. And indeed, Lawrence Hurley of NBC News reported on Wednesday that Roberts himself indicated in remarks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that “the new oral argument format has ‘blown up’ and is ‘too long’ and the court might revisit it this summer.”
3. The impact of live audio is real – but not in the way the justices had feared.
The Supreme Court had long resisted livestreaming its oral argument audio, instead posting the audio of oral arguments on its website several days after arguments – after public interest had ebbed, and too late to be any use to most members of the media. When the court shifted to telephone arguments in the spring of 2020, however, it had little choice but to provide a livestream of the audio, and it continued to make live audio available after it returned to the courtroom.
As far as the arguments themselves are concerned, the introduction of live audio appears to have had little effect. The justices and the lawyers don’t seem to pay any attention to the fact that there is a separate (and often large) audience listening outside the courtroom. Indeed, when it is time for the round-robin questioning, the interactions between Roberts and the other justices – him asking them whether they have additional questions and their responses – are often nonverbal.
Live audio has changed other aspects of the courtroom and the arguments, however. Except in the biggest cases, like the challenges to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and his order seeking to end the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States, the seats in the courtroom reserved for lawyers who are admitted to practice before the court – in a special section behind the arguing lawyers and in front of the public seats – are rarely full. This makes some sense. Going to see an argument at the Supreme Court these days is a major time commitment: You have to get there early to stand in line and be seated before the argument begins at 10 a.m., and – depending on the argument – you may not get back to your office until well after lunch. Throw in the fact that you don’t have access to any electronics (or coffee!) for the entire time that you’re sitting in the courtroom, and many lawyers may prefer to listen to the arguments in the comfort of their own offices or homes. The lawyers who do show up often have a stake or a real interest in the case (as you can sometimes see when they nod or shake their heads in response to an advocate’s argument).
Live audio has led to a major shift in how reporters cover the court, as well. When the audio wasn’t available until later in the week, reporters had to be in the courtroom, seated either in the two rows of benches perpendicular to the seats reserved for lawyers or in the wooden chairs behind the benches, if they wanted to write about the story that day. With the live audio, however, it is – at least in terms of producing a story quickly – a disadvantage to be in the courtroom: Reporting from the courtroom is done “old school,” with just pen and paper, so you can’t write and file your story until the argument is over. By contrast, if you listen to the live audio (which some reporters do from the press room at the court, and others do from their news bureaus or from home), you can start drafting your story during the argument, and many outlets – including SCOTUSblog – have a live blog of the arguments in major cases.
4. There is no substitute for attending arguments in person (at least without cameras).
Although the live audio is overall a welcome development, attending oral arguments in person provides much better insights into the dynamics on the court and, in some cases, how the case is likely to turn out. First, it goes without saying that if you aren’t in the courtroom, you can’t see the body language of either the justices or the lawyers who are arguing. For example, at about the nine-and-a-half-minute mark of the April 22 argument in the immigration case Blanche v. Lau, Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General Sopan Joshi was responding to a question from Barrett when Jackson attempted to interject. If, like me, you were listening to the audio, you will hear Barrett push back, telling Jackson, “I’m sorry, I’m not quite finished.” But (according to one colleague who was in the room at the time) you would not see Barrett hold out her left arm – the arm closest to Jackson, who sits on the opposite end of the bench – with her hand upturned at the same time, a gentle but unmistakable rebuke.
There are other things that the live audio doesn’t reveal. Sometimes the justices come out from behind the curtain and take the bench looking fairly grim, while other times they seem relatively relaxed. There are a few “friendships” on the bench that you can only see when you are there in person: Barrett and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sit next to each other, frequently chat, as do Kagan and Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the other end of the bench. You can see Roberts put on what I think of as his “serenity now” face when one of his colleagues spends too long on the round-robin questioning. And although the conventional wisdom is that it is a good sign if the justices don’t have a lot of questions for you, sometimes being in the room leads to the contrary conclusion – that the justices aren’t interrupting a lawyer often because (particularly if it’s the second argument of the day) they have already made up their minds to rule for his opponent.
Without being in the courtroom in person for the arguments in the birthright citizenship case, you would not have seen the president come in and sit down, or where he sat (in the front row). There was no fanfare to announce the arrival of the first sitting president to attend oral arguments, and even if there had been, the live audio hadn’t started yet. It would have been difficult to discern from the audio how animated Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, was during his long stint at the lectern in the case, not only in the tone of his voice but also with his movements. The live audio was running when Trump stood up to leave, about 10 minutes after Sauer finished and the ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, representing the challengers, was fielding questions, but there was no fanfare accompanying his departure either.
And live audio did not capture the look of surprise on Roberts’ face during the oral argument in Cisco Systems v. Doe when he was handed a note, moments before he announced that four planes would fly over the city soon as part of the visit of King Charles III to Washington. Roberts told the lawyers and the audience that he did not want us to be “alarmed,” but we ultimately did not hear the planes at all – a tribute to the quality of the court’s construction?
Even if live audio doesn’t compare with being in the courtroom, it is better than nothing – which, for all intents and purposes, is what we get for the announcement of opinions. Much to the chagrin of journalists, the audio of opinion announcements isn’t sent to the National Archives until the following term, and it does not become generally accessible to the public until the website Oyez puts it online, usually sometime in January. Although those announcements certainly have historical and pedagogical value, they are released far too late to have any real value to journalists.
5. The high quality of the advocacy at the court
Much has been written about the ever-increasing dominance of the “Supreme Court bar” – the relatively small group of lawyers who argue regularly before the court. If anything, that dominance appears to be increasing: during the April argument session, for example, only one of the 12 lawyers not affiliated with the federal government, Geoffrey Pipoly, was arguing before the court for the first time. And only three of those lawyers – Ahilan Arulanantham, Ashley Keller, and Paul Hoffman – had fewer than 10 arguments. The rest had anywhere from a bit more than a dozen (Adam Unikowsky) to more than a hundred (Paul Clement) arguments under their belts.
Given all of this expertise, it is not surprising that the lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court do a really good job. As the kids would say (at least a few years ago), they understand the assignment: they are keenly aware that the justices are not only deciding their own cases but also establishing a rule to govern future cases, and they usually don’t resist the justices’ efforts to ask them about hypotheticals that may be different from their own cases. Many of them are able, even while being constantly peppered with questions, to respond to those questions while at the same time advancing specific points of their own. And sometimes, like super-lawyer Clement, they do all of this without any notes. But the lawyers who are not regulars do very well also – a tribute to those lawyers, as well as to the work that groups like the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute and the National Association of Attorneys General do to help litigants prepare for arguments at the court.
6. Where are the women?
At the same time, watching a lot of oral arguments provides a stark reminder of how few women argue before the Supreme Court, on a regular basis or otherwise. Women made up only 30% of the lawyers arguing during the 2025-26 term, only a slight improvement from 28% during the 2016-17 term. And although the Office of the Solicitor General – the federal government’s top lawyers before the court – often plays an important role in ensuring that women are well represented among arguing lawyers, women made up only 27% (six out of 22) of the lawyers who argued on behalf of the federal government during the 2025-26 term. This can have implications in future years as well, as the solicitor general’s office has served as a launching pad for the careers of many of the lawyers, both male and female, who argue regularly before the court now. At 30%, that number was marginally higher (seven female lawyers out of 23), five years before, during the 2021-22 term.
Two women – former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and Lisa Blatt, who has argued more cases before the court than any other woman – were involved in one of the best match-ups of the term: the April 20 oral argument in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Center, involving the relationship between federal and state courts. But notably, that was only the fourth (and final) argument of the term in which all of the lawyers were women.
7. Sometimes the lower-profile cases are more enjoyable to watch.
Covering big cases is fun, don’t get me wrong. There’s the ritual of craning our necks to see whether anyone famous (or what passes for famous in Washington) is in the audience, and of being warned by the Supreme Court police officers that we will get thrown out if we stand up again to try to see who’s in the seats reserved for the justices’ guests or whether that really is John Mulaney in the back. There are the cramped hands from trying to scribble down every word of the argument, and then the mad dash downstairs to our desks, to try to put together the first version of our stories.
But in their own way, the lower-profile cases are just as enjoyable, if not more fun, to attend. When you’re not worried about capturing every word, you can sit back and watch the lawyers and the justices more carefully – who’s whispering to whom, who is brave enough to get more coffee even after the argument is well underway, who calls for a book from the library.
The justices themselves are also more relaxed during these lower-profile arguments, perhaps because they are less likely to be ideologically divided or the stakes are lower. This can lead to flashes of humor that we might not see in cases with higher stakes. For example, during the oral argument in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Center, Blatt declared that the justices “are not going to overrule” the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars the lower federal courts from hearing direct appeals of state-court decisions. That prompted Alito to respond wryly, “Don’t dare some of my colleagues.” Justice Clarence Thomas roared with laughter.
The argument in T.M. was a memorable one for yet another reason: It marked Prelogar’s return to the lectern for the first time since January 2025, when she represented the federal government in TikTok v. Garland, her final argument as the Biden administration’s solicitor general. But even after more than three dozen arguments over 12 years, some justices continue to struggle with pronouncing her last name. (It’s “Pree-log-er.”)
All of these thoughts lead to one big question: Will I try to attend all of the arguments next term? Although it seems unlikely that all of the stars and planets will align to let me do so, you betcha.