Supreme Court justices may give away their votes with their voices
THE JUSTICES don black robes, sit impassively during State of the Union addresses and steer clear of Twitter for a reason: the Supreme Court is supposed to be a dispassionate tribunal untainted by politics or emotion. In 2016, a study by Ryan Black and three fellow political scientists found that Supreme Court justices frown on emotionally charged language in legal briefs. Words like “glorious” and “outrageous” seldom persuade, the researchers found; measured language more often wins the day. An aversion to over-the-top language from lawyers’ pens does not mean the justices conduct themselves with robotic stoicism, however. A new paper shows that it may be possible to predict the outcome of a case by listening carefully to the pitch of the justices’ voices during oral arguments.
When justices question a lawyer at a higher-than-usual pitch, that lawyer's side is likely to...Continue reading