WASHINGTON POST HIGHLIGHTS STUDENT’S RESEARCH

Law Center student Sarah Levien (3L) may have discovered a way to predict how Supreme Court Justices will decide cases. Her research into the link between justices’ questions during oral argument and their ultimate decisions was the subject of a column by Washington Post writer Charles Lane last November. Lane, calling Levien’s research “intriguing,” said the notion that justices’ questions and comments merely reflect an effort to probe each sides’ strengths and weakness–leaving no indication of how they will decide–may now be in question.    
        “This view has long been doubted by journalists and other lawyers,” Lane wrote. “But they have been unable to muster statistical evidence until now.”
      Levien’s research, based on 10 cases from the Court’s 2002-03 term, found that a justice generally asks more questions, and more questions of an argumentative nature, of the party he or she ultimately votes against.And the party receiving the most questions overall in each case Levien studied lost each time.
     Levien’s paper, “The Illusion of Devil’s Advocacy: How the U.S. Supreme Court Justices Foreshadow Their Decisions During Oral Argument,” confirms “the longstanding suspicions of many a courtroom regular,” Lane wrote.The paper will appear this fall in The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, a faculty-edited publication at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law.