This time, we’re tracking the oral arguments for the Court’s cases decided in 2018, beginning with civil cases. If you’re a new reader of our blog, we reviewed the history of oral argument analytics here.
Among the civil cases decided in 2018, the Court asked 285 questions of appellant – opening segment and rebuttal – and 274 questions of the appellees. Appellants averaged 12.95 questions per civil argument and appellees averaged 12.45 questions per argument.
As we show in the summary of past analytics on oral arguments, parties who will lose tend to be asked more questions. So we divided the 2018 civil cases by the ultimate result. Affirmances follow the expected pattern, as appellants averaged 12.89 questions while appellees averaged only 10 questions per argument.
What about split decisions, where the Court affirms in part and reverses in part? In split decisions, appellants averaged 17 questions while appellees averaged 10.33 questions.
For reversals, once again the result is as expected – appellees averaged 15.3 questions while appellants averaged 11.8 questions.
Join us back here next time as we take a deeper look at the Court’s civil arguments.
Image courtesy of Flickr by HystericalMark (no changes).