For four hours a day, four days a week, two weeks a month, the Supreme Court listens to lawyers argue their cases. For the lawyers, their rigorously controlled time before the bench can be a harrowing ordeal. They are allowed exactly one hour* by the clock in which to make their oral arguments—and during that brief span they must field the penetrating questions of the nine justices. "I made three arguments in every case," the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once wrote about his own appearance before the court as Solicitor General of the U.S. "First came the...
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