What is the real reason for oral arguments in the Supreme Court?
It may sound unconventional, but the justices pretty much use the oral arguments as a method of convincing fellow justices of their own views, according to a University of Arkansas study.
For the study, university researchers looked at 11 of the court's more contentious cases in the 2009 and 2010 terms.
They found that during oral arguments, justices are more likely to interrupt lawyers if they ultimately disagreed with them.
These interruptions show us that, rather than giving lawyers the opportunity to make their points, justices are simply trying to take control of the argument and convince their colleagues on the bench to think the same way.
“This shows that justices come to the bench in individual cases with a pre-set idea of what they think is the right answer," writes William Schreckhise, a political science professor and one of the authors of the study.
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