Product Description: The U.S. Supreme Court, with its controlled, highly institutionalized decision-making practices, provides an ideal environment for studying coalition formation. The process begins during the oral argument stage, which provides the justices with their first opportunity to hear one another's attitudes and concerns specific to a case...read more

Product Description: Members of the Supreme Court are supposed to base decisions on the law, but often their choices are better explained by political ideology and party loyalty. Roberts sheds light on this problem by looking at a part of the Court's life that has never been systematically studied...read more

Product Description: This book reveals the inside secrets from one of the country's leading Supreme Court advocates about how to prepare to argue in court. Chapters in this book address organizing an approach to preparation, handling the wide range of questions judges ask, honing openings, basic approaches to presenting argument, common mistakes, and attributes of the best advocates...read more

A compendium of closing arguments that were given during eight key civil rights court cases documents such landmark precedents as the Amistad slavery case and the Larry Flynt free speech trial, in a volume complemented by historical information, attorney bios, and analyses of the closing arguments. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Introduces the most memorable opening and closing arguments from the past century of American legal battles in the courtroom, featuring more than two dozen selections that highlight diverse facets of the legal process, including such cases as Patty Hearst, Michael Skakel, Timothy McVeigh, Ethel Rosenberg, Karen Silkwood, and more. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Timothy R. Johnson focuses on an all-too-often ignored aspect of the Supreme Court's decision-making process by providing a systematic explanation of how justices use oral arguments to make substantive legal and policy decisions. Using the arguments filed to the Court in legal briefs, oral argument transcripts, notes taken by Justice Lewis F. Powell during oral arguments, conference notes and internal memos of justices, and Court opinions, the book analyzes justices' behavior during these proceedings. The result is an impressive account demonstrating that justices use oral arguments to gather information regarding legal and policy options in a case, the preferences of competing political institutions and actors, and institutional rules that might affect the choices they make.