Next week Beale Memorial Library will offer another key stop for fans of the Bakersfield Sound. Ten large-scale portraits of local country greats will serve as a visual tribute to our rich musical legacy.Read more

For the chief executive of a company that just reported a quarterly loss of $711 million, Francisco Leon sounded upbeat.Read more

Despite assurances it’d come with a “highly efficient hybrid cooling system,” a data center proposed in Inyokern has raised concerns it would strain the region’s water supplies while imposing unacceptable levels of noise, heat and light pollution on the surrounding…Read more

The Bakersfield Police Department arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of being involved in at least 35 thefts dating back to July that caused more than $14,000 in losses, the agency reported.Read more

The ripple effects from the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the justices struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, made their way to the court for the first time on Friday afternoon. In a 25-page filing, Alabama asked the court to clear the way for it to use a congressional map that it had adopted in 2023, which has one majority-Black district, rather than a court-ordered map that has two such districts. Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre told the justices that otherwise the state would have to “hold elections under a map that was erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst. Nothing requires that result,” Bowdre concluded. “Americans, no less in Alabama, deserve a republic free of racial sorting now, and state officials deserve an opportunity to give it to them.”The filing is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over Alabama’s congressional map. In 2021, in Allen v. Milligan, a divided Supreme Court agreed that the congressional map that the state had adopted in 2021 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black voters – specifically, by packing many of the state’s Black voters into a single district in central Alabama and then dispersing other Black voters in the region, known as the “Black Belt,” into several other districts, where they did not make up a majority.After the court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan, Alabama adopted a new map. But a federal district court then blocked the use of the 2023 map, which had only one majority-Black district, holding that it discriminated against Black voters. The court ordered the state to use a map with a second majority-Black district.The state then went to the Supreme Court, which had waited to act on Alabama’s appeals until after it issued its ruling in Callais. Alabama has asked the justices to fast-track their consideration of those appeals, but it notes the justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until Monday, May 18, just one day before the state’s primary election is supposed to take place. Therefore, it argues, at a minimum the court should pause the lower-court orders barring the state from using the 2023 map.Alabama contends that its “case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race.” When it drew the 2023 map, Alabama said, it sought to “achiev[e] the State’s neutral goals (like protecting incumbents) and refus[ed] to let race predominate.” As a practical matter, it asserts, it “compl[ied] with Callais before Callais,” prompting the lower court to strike down the 2023 map.Now, Alabama explains, the state’s Legislature has held a special session and is ready to pass a bill that would reinstate the 2023 map. It should have the chance to do so, just as Louisiana has, the state concludes.The state acknowledges that “election day in Alabama is fast approaching. But the legislature is currently addressing,” it says, “whether election deadlines could be shifted to conduct special elections under the 2023 Plan if the injunction is promptly lifted. If Alabamians can have an election free of racially sorted congressional districts,” the state writes, “they should have the opportunity.”Justice Clarence Thomas, who fields emergency requests from the area that includes Alabama, directed the challengers in the case to respond to the state’s request by Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. EDT.Read more

When President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, he directed his administration to “restor[e] the death penalty.” His embrace of capital punishment helped fuel a surge in executions at the state level last year, as I previously reported, and led the Justice Department to produce a report on “strengthening” the federal death penalty, which was released late last month.In the report, the Justice Department defended the use of pentobarbital – a powerful sedative – for lethal injections, criticizing the Biden administration’s determination that it may cause “unnecessary pain and suffering.” Nevertheless, citing ongoing legal challenges to pentobarbital use and related problems obtaining the drugs used in lethal injections, the DOJ recommended expanding the list of federal execution methods by adding firing squads, electrocution, and lethal gas.Throughout the report, the Justice Department referenced past Supreme Court rulings in capital cases, noting that the court “has never rejected a method of execution as unconstitutional.” Left unsaid was a follow-on assumption: It’s unlikely to do so anytime soon.If you explore SCOTUSblog’s record of requests for stays of execution, that may, at first, appear to be a safe assumption. The record shows that the court only rarely comments on – much less takes up for argument – issues raised by death row inmates, including challenges to execution methods. The court has not paused an execution in nearly two years, and, over that period, there have been only a handful of noted dissents. But if you look closely at cases in which there was acknowledged disagreement among the justices, it’s clear that at least a few of them have serious questions about the constitutionality of one of the execution methods featured in the DOJ report: nitrogen hypoxia, or death as the result of inhaling pure nitrogen gas.Execution by nitrogen gasAs the DOJ noted in its report, “lethal gas has a long history of use as a form of capital punishment in the United States.” In the past, such executions were typically carried out with cyanide gas, but today’s lethal gas executions use nitrogen.In nitrogen gas executions, a mask dispensing pure nitrogen blocks access to oxygen, leading to death by hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. The DOJ contended that “death by nitrogen hypoxia” has the support of “advocates of medically assisted suicide.” However, it acknowledged an ongoing debate over its risks, including that it may cause “conscious suffocation.”Nitrogen hypoxia is an approved form of execution in five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. But in some of these states, it can only be used if lethal injection drugs are not available or if an inmate affirmatively chooses it, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The first nitrogen gas execution in the U.S. was carried out in Alabama, where lethal injection is the default method but inmates can choose nitrogen hypoxia or electrocution, in January 2024, and seven more have taken place since then – six in Alabama and one in Louisiana, according to the center’s records.After the most recent nitrogen gas execution – Anthony Boyd’s death in Alabama on Oct. 23, 2025 – The New York Times highlighted growing concern about its use. While nitrogen hypoxia was introduced as a humane alternative to lethal injection at a time when policymakers, including in the Biden administration, were reassessing the use of pentobarbital, observers of nitrogen gas executions have “described difficult-to-watch scenes in which prisoners writhe on the gurney before they are pronounced dead.” The Times noted that “Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist in Alabama who witnessed” Boyd’s execution, saw “Boyd gasp for air more than 225 times before he was pronounced dead.”In its report, the DOJ pointed to three rulings on nitrogen hypoxia – two from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and one from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, emphasizing that both courts held that this execution method “comports with the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” The 5th Circuit held that “[b]reathing 100% pure nitrogen causes unconsciousness in less than a minute, with death following rapidly within ten to fifteen minutes. And it does not produce physical pain.” It concluded, as the DOJ put it, that “death by nitrogen hypoxia was no more painful than other methods of execution already approved by the Supreme Court.”Justices raise questionsThe DOJ observed that the prisoners appealed those rulings from the 11th and 5th Circuits to the Supreme Court, which denied requests to pause the executions. It did not, however, add that there were public dissents in two of those cases, nor did the DOJ engage with the concerns those dissenting justices shared about nitrogen gas executions.In fact, since January 2024, when Alabama carried out the first such execution, the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – have dissented in three capital cases involving nitrogen hypoxia, and Justice Neil Gorsuch has dissented in one. The three liberal justices questioned whether this method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment, while Gorsuch emphasized potential religious freedom concerns.The first such writings came in Smith v. Hamm, in which Kenneth Eugene Smith challenged Alabama’s plan to make him the first person in the country to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia. Alabama had previously tried and failed to execute Smith by lethal injection due to issues accessing a vein, and, although he had previously expressed a preference for being executed via nitrogen gas, he contended in 2024 that Alabama’s plan for his second execution violated the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court declined to pause his execution, but Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented from the denial. In her dissent, Sotomayor described nitrogen hypoxia as an “untested” method, raising the possibility that Smith might “choke[] on his own vomit” rather than dying of oxygen deprivation. “With deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment, I respectfully dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.In her own brief dissenting opinion, joined by Jackson, Kagan contended that Alabama should have provided more information about its new protocol, explaining that she would put the execution on hold to give the court time “to address that important issue.”The next separate writing on nitrogen hypoxia came in March 2025 in Hoffman v. Westcott, in which Jessie Hoffman, who was Buddhist, challenged his pending nitrogen gas execution in Louisiana under the Eighth Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (a law protecting certain religious freedoms), contending that nitrogen gas execution would interfere with a significant spiritual practice: “meditative breathing at the time of death.” Buddhists, he explained, believe that “meditation and unfettered breath at the time of transition from life to death determines the quality of rebirth.” Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson noted that they would grant Hoffman’s request for a stay of execution, but they did not explain why. Gorsuch also dissented and wrote to explain his belief that the court should have sent the case back to the 5th Circuit for fuller consideration of Hoffman’s RLUIPA claim.The third and final nitrogen hypoxia case with a separate writing was Boyd’s in October 2025. Boyd had asked the court to consider whether nitrogen gas execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and expressed a willingness to be executed by firing squad instead. The court denied his request to pause his execution. In a nine-page dissenting opinion, which was joined by Kagan and Jackson, Sotomayor invited readers to imagine suffocating to death. “You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas,” she wrote. “Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe. That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight.”Sotomayor went on to describe the seven nitrogen gas executions that had taken place by that point, contending that “firsthand accounts from those executions” paint a picture of a painful, extended death marked by “violent movements” and gasps for air. “Seven people have already been subjected to this cruel form of execution,” she wrote. “The Court should not allow Boyd to become the eighth.”A possible future caseBecause Gorsuch only dissented in the case involving a religious freedom claim, it does not appear that he has broader concerns about execution by nitrogen gas. Even if he does, four votes are not enough to grant a request for a stay of execution, where five are needed. However, if there were indeed four votes to pause an execution, another justice may be willing to provide a “courtesy fifth” out of recognition that just four justices need to vote in favor of a petition for review of it to be taken up on the merits (although, admittedly, this “courtesy fifth” practice has not been employed consistently, as SCOTUSblog reported in 2016). In other words, it’s conceivable that this issue could make it to the court’s oral argument docket if states continue to use it.In any event, the issue may be back in front of the Supreme Court on its emergency docket as soon as next month, when Jeffrey Lee, who was sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama. “The execution date” of June 11 “was set as Lee has an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the humaneness of the nitrogen execution method,” according to the Associated Press. Specifically, like several appellants before him, Lee contends that execution by nitrogen gas qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.Read more

I love a good project. So when the 2025-26 term began, I had a new one. I decided to try to attend all of the oral arguments for the term, even if I wasn’t covering the case for SCOTUSblog and regardless of how obscure the issue in the case was.Some of my colleagues in the press room expressed surprise at this plan. One of them asked, skeptically, “Why?” As much as we all love the Supreme Court, they saw it as unnecessary – if not downright masochistic – to attend every single argument session.The idea behind the project was pretty simple. I wanted to see what I could learn about the justices and their dynamic over the course of the entire term – watching them not just in the high-profile cases when they have many eyes on them, but also in the lower-profile cases in which only a few reporters may be in the room.Unfortunately, I wound up falling short of my “perfect attendance” goal. I got a nasty cold in January that kept me away from the courtroom, and then I missed a few more arguments after that because of work travel (including FCC v. AT&Tand Blanche v. Lau) and a big opinion release (I’m looking at you, Louisiana v. Callais) that took priority over oral argument. But I think I attended enough oral arguments to draw a few conclusions, which I outline below.1. The bench has gotten hotter.For as long as I have been covering the Supreme Court, it has been known as a “hot bench”: The justices ask a lot of questions, using the arguments as opportunities not only to press the lawyers for answers but also to talk to each other (like the TV show “Jeopardy!,” in the form of a question). This “hot bench” is said to date back to Justice Antonin Scalia’s arrival at the court in 1980s, and until the court in 2019 adopted a rule giving arguing lawyers two minutes to make their case without interruption, lawyers could not count on getting more than a sentence out before a justice jumped in with a question or comment (much to Justice Clarence Thomas’ chagrin).Like so many things, that all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the justices shifted to holding oral arguments over the phone and – to accommodate their new format – asking questions one at a time, in order of seniority.When the justices returned to the bench after the pandemic, they adopted a hybrid approach – reverting to the free-for-all format that they had used for the time initially allotted to each lawyer, but following the “free for all” with the “round-robin” questioning used during the pandemic. At that point, the hot bench appeared to have cooled off at least a little bit, perhaps because the justices knew that each of them would have an opportunity to ask questions at the end, so they could afford to give the lawyers a little bit more time to finish their answers.But, four years after the justices’ return to the courtroom, the bench has definitely heated up again. And in particular, the hotter bench this term led to many more of what my colleague Mark Walsh (a hockey player and referee) calls “face-offs” – efforts by more than one justice to speak at the same time. These scenarios usually resolve themselves in one of two ways. There seems to be a norm (unwritten, as so many of the justices’ practices are) that the more junior justice will yield to the more senior justice who wants to speak. And so most of the time, one justice – normally the more junior one – will look at the other and say something along the lines of, “Please, go ahead.” But sometimes, the more senior justice will just keep talking, without acknowledging that a colleague is also trying to speak. Does this reflect frustration with the intense pace of questions and interruptions or just a focus on getting questions out? There’s no way to know for sure, but the former possibility seems entirely plausible.Sometimes the face-offs need a referee of their own. During the March oral argument in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, in which the court is considering a challenge to the government’s policy of systematically turning back asylum seekers before they reach the U.S. border with Mexico, several justices – including Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett – tried to speak at once, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to say, sharply and loudly, “Please!” Roberts asked his own question first and then called on Justice Elena Kagan (who enjoys seniority over both Barrett and Jackson) to ask the next question.2. The arguments are often long . . . and there’s no sign of them getting any shorter.Since the return to the courtroom in the fall of 2021, the arguments have unmistakably gotten longer: each lawyer has his or her allocated time to argue, plus however long the justices take with their “round robin” questions – which, depending on the case, can be substantial. As a result, the general rule that reporters in the press room have adopted to figure out how long an argument will actually last is to take the time allotted for the argument – normally one hour – and double it, especially if there are more than two lawyers arguing.By all accounts, the lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court like the extended argument format, because it gives them an opportunity to address essentially all of the justices’ questions and concerns. You get the sense, however, that the justices themselves may be less enthusiastic about the longer arguments. This is not just because Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday told an audience at the Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference (a gathering of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and some of the lawyers who practice regularly there) that oral arguments “can go on and on and on and on … past the point where they are contributing to the decision-making process.” It is also because on the days when the court hears arguments in two cases, the justices tend to be less engaged, both during the “free for all” part of the argument and during the round-robin questioning. The second argument often wraps up more or less on time, if not early. Perhaps the justices are thinking about lunch by this point? Or, as the only ones in the room allowed to bring their own drinks (which are sometimes refilled mid-argument) they just need a break?As with many things at the court, to the extent that the justices are dissatisfied with the current length of arguments, it is entirely within their control. Even if they don’t want to eliminate the round-robin questioning altogether, they could agree to shorten the time that each justice gets to ask questions (which is believed to be approximately five minutes, although, as with so many things concerning the court, this is not memorialized anywhere) during that round. And indeed, Lawrence Hurley of NBC News reported on Wednesday that Roberts himself indicated in remarks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that “the new oral argument format has ‘blown up’ and is ‘too long’ and the court might revisit it this summer.”3. The impact of live audio is real – but not in the way the justices had feared.The Supreme Court had long resisted livestreaming its oral argument audio, instead posting the audio of oral arguments on its website several days after arguments – after public interest had ebbed, and too late to be any use to most members of the media. When the court shifted to telephone arguments in the spring of 2020, however, it had little choice but to provide a livestream of the audio, and it continued to make live audio available after it returned to the courtroom.As far as the arguments themselves are concerned, the introduction of live audio appears to have had little effect. The justices and the lawyers don’t seem to pay any attention to the fact that there is a separate (and often large) audience listening outside the courtroom. Indeed, when it is time for the round-robin questioning, the interactions between Roberts and the other justices – him asking them whether they have additional questions and their responses – are often nonverbal.Live audio has changed other aspects of the courtroom and the arguments, however. Except in the biggest cases, like the challenges to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and his order seeking to end the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States, the seats in the courtroom reserved for lawyers who are admitted to practice before the court – in a special section behind the arguing lawyers and in front of the public seats – are rarely full. This makes some sense. Going to see an argument at the Supreme Court these days is a major time commitment: You have to get there early to stand in line and be seated before the argument begins at 10 a.m., and – depending on the argument – you may not get back to your office until well after lunch. Throw in the fact that you don’t have access to any electronics (or coffee!) for the entire time that you’re sitting in the courtroom, and many lawyers may prefer to listen to the arguments in the comfort of their own offices or homes. The lawyers who do show up often have a stake or a real interest in the case (as you can sometimes see when they nod or shake their heads in response to an advocate’s argument).Live audio has led to a major shift in how reporters cover the court, as well. When the audio wasn’t available until later in the week, reporters had to be in the courtroom, seated either in the two rows of benches perpendicular to the seats reserved for lawyers or in the wooden chairs behind the benches, if they wanted to write about the story that day. With the live audio, however, it is – at least in terms of producing a story quickly – a disadvantage to be in the courtroom: Reporting from the courtroom is done “old school,” with just pen and paper, so you can’t write and file your story until the argument is over. By contrast, if you listen to the live audio (which some reporters do from the press room at the court, and others do from their news bureaus or from home), you can start drafting your story during the argument, and many outlets – including SCOTUSblog – have a live blog of the arguments in major cases.4. There is no substitute for attending arguments in person (at least without cameras).Although the live audio is overall a welcome development, attending oral arguments in person provides much better insights into the dynamics on the court and, in some cases, how the case is likely to turn out. First, it goes without saying that if you aren’t in the courtroom, you can’t see the body language of either the justices or the lawyers who are arguing. For example, at about the nine-and-a-half-minute mark of the April 22 argument in the immigration case Blanche v. Lau, Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General Sopan Joshi was responding to a question from Barrett when Jackson attempted to interject. If, like me, you were listening to the audio, you will hear Barrett push back, telling Jackson, “I’m sorry, I’m not quite finished.” But (according to one colleague who was in the room at the time) you would not see Barrett hold out her left arm – the arm closest to Jackson, who sits on the opposite end of the bench – with her hand upturned at the same time, a gentle but unmistakable rebuke.There are other things that the live audio doesn’t reveal. Sometimes the justices come out from behind the curtain and take the bench looking fairly grim, while other times they seem relatively relaxed. There are a few “friendships” on the bench that you can only see when you are there in person: Barrett and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sit next to each other, frequently chat, as do Kagan and Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the other end of the bench. You can see Roberts put on what I think of as his “serenity now” face when one of his colleagues spends too long on the round-robin questioning. And although the conventional wisdom is that it is a good sign if the justices don’t have a lot of questions for you, sometimes being in the room leads to the contrary conclusion – that the justices aren’t interrupting a lawyer often because (particularly if it’s the second argument of the day) they have already made up their minds to rule for his opponent.Without being in the courtroom in person for the arguments in the birthright citizenship case, you would not have seen the president come in and sit down, or where he sat (in the front row). There was no fanfare to announce the arrival of the first sitting president to attend oral arguments, and even if there had been, the live audio hadn’t started yet. It would have been difficult to discern from the audio how animated Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, was during his long stint at the lectern in the case, not only in the tone of his voice but also with his movements. The live audio was running when Trump stood up to leave, about 10 minutes after Sauer finished and the ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, representing the challengers, was fielding questions, but there was no fanfare accompanying his departure either.And live audio did not capture the look of surprise on Roberts’ face during the oral argument in Cisco Systems v. Doe when he was handed a note, moments before he announced that four planes would fly over the city soon as part of the visit of King Charles III to Washington. Roberts told the lawyers and the audience that he did not want us to be “alarmed,” but we ultimately did not hear the planes at all – a tribute to the quality of the court’s construction?Even if live audio doesn’t compare with being in the courtroom, it is better than nothing – which, for all intents and purposes, is what we get for the announcement of opinions. Much to the chagrin of journalists, the audio of opinion announcements isn’t sent to the National Archives until the following term, and it does not become generally accessible to the public until the website Oyez puts it online, usually sometime in January. Although those announcements certainly have historical and pedagogical value, they are released far too late to have any real value to journalists.5. The high quality of the advocacy at the courtMuch has been written about the ever-increasing dominance of the “Supreme Court bar” – the relatively small group of lawyers who argue regularly before the court. If anything, that dominance appears to be increasing: during the April argument session, for example, only one of the 12 lawyers not affiliated with the federal government, Geoffrey Pipoly, was arguing before the court for the first time. And only three of those lawyers – Ahilan Arulanantham, Ashley Keller, and Paul Hoffman – had fewer than 10 arguments. The rest had anywhere from a bit more than a dozen (Adam Unikowsky) to more than a hundred (Paul Clement) arguments under their belts.Given all of this expertise, it is not surprising that the lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court do a really good job. As the kids would say (at least a few years ago), they understand the assignment: they are keenly aware that the justices are not only deciding their own cases but also establishing a rule to govern future cases, and they usually don’t resist the justices’ efforts to ask them about hypotheticals that may be different from their own cases. Many of them are able, even while being constantly peppered with questions, to respond to those questions while at the same time advancing specific points of their own. And sometimes, like super-lawyer Clement, they do all of this without any notes. But the lawyers who are not regulars do very well also – a tribute to those lawyers, as well as to the work that groups like the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute and the National Association of Attorneys General do to help litigants prepare for arguments at the court.6. Where are the women?At the same time, watching a lot of oral arguments provides a stark reminder of how few women argue before the Supreme Court, on a regular basis or otherwise. Women made up only 30% of the lawyers arguing during the 2025-26 term, only a slight improvement from 28% during the 2016-17 term. And although the Office of the Solicitor General – the federal government’s top lawyers before the court – often plays an important role in ensuring that women are well represented among arguing lawyers, women made up only 27% (six out of 22) of the lawyers who argued on behalf of the federal government during the 2025-26 term. This can have implications in future years as well, as the solicitor general’s office has served as a launching pad for the careers of many of the lawyers, both male and female, who argue regularly before the court now. At 30%, that number was marginally higher (seven female lawyers out of 23), five years before, during the 2021-22 term.Two women – former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and Lisa Blatt, who has argued more cases before the court than any other woman – were involved in one of the best match-ups of the term: the April 20 oral argument in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Center, involving the relationship between federal and state courts. But notably, that was only the fourth (and final) argument of the term in which all of the lawyers were women.7. Sometimes the lower-profile cases are more enjoyable to watch.Covering big cases is fun, don’t get me wrong. There’s the ritual of craning our necks to see whether anyone famous (or what passes for famous in Washington) is in the audience, and of being warned by the Supreme Court police officers that we will get thrown out if we stand up again to try to see who’s in the seats reserved for the justices’ guests or whether that really is John Mulaney in the back. There are the cramped hands from trying to scribble down every word of the argument, and then the mad dash downstairs to our desks, to try to put together the first version of our stories.But in their own way, the lower-profile cases are just as enjoyable, if not more fun, to attend. When you’re not worried about capturing every word, you can sit back and watch the lawyers and the justices more carefully – who’s whispering to whom, who is brave enough to get more coffee even after the argument is well underway, who calls for a book from the library.The justices themselves are also more relaxed during these lower-profile arguments, perhaps because they are less likely to be ideologically divided or the stakes are lower. This can lead to flashes of humor that we might not see in cases with higher stakes. For example, during the oral argument in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Center, Blatt declared that the justices “are not going to overrule” the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars the lower federal courts from hearing direct appeals of state-court decisions. That prompted Alito to respond wryly, “Don’t dare some of my colleagues.” Justice Clarence Thomas roared with laughter.The argument in T.M. was a memorable one for yet another reason: It marked Prelogar’s return to the lectern for the first time since January 2025, when she represented the federal government in TikTok v. Garland, her final argument as the Biden administration’s solicitor general. But even after more than three dozen arguments over 12 years, some justices continue to struggle with pronouncing her last name. (It’s “Pree-log-er.”)All of these thoughts lead to one big question: Will I try to attend all of the arguments next term? Although it seems unlikely that all of the stars and planets will align to let me do so, you betcha.Read more