The Supreme Court began hearing oral argument for the fall term this morning. SCOTUS Blog always has great coverage of what cases are being argued today and a preview of the cases this week. Two interesting criminal procedure cases are being argued Tuesday:
- Herring v. United States (07-513), on whether courts must suppress evidence seized during an arrest made as a result of faulty information provided by another law enforcement agency
- Arizona v. Gant (07-542), on whether police must show a threat to their safety or the preservation of evidence to conduct a warrantless search of a car whose occupant was recently arrested.
So I was wondering if argument actually influences the decisions of the Justices. Interesting article from the Yale Pocket Part – an online publication of the Yale Law Journal. Frederick Liu’s Citing the Transcript of Oral Argument: Which Justices Do It and Why analyzes empirical data from 1994-2007, examining the number of citations to the oral argument transcript that are included in opinions.
Liu also details how Justices use oral argument.
The three main reasons Justices cite the transcript are: (1) to describe an advocate’s affirmative position; (2) to record an advocate’s concession; and (3) to note an advocate’s representation of the record or facts.
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- do oral arguments matter
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That was a great blog. Most blogs are not even worth reading.