Information-Seeking Behavior of Justices During U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments (Top Three Paper).

This study examines 17 U.S. Supreme Court transcripts in oral arguments that took place in mass communication-related cases from December 8, 2004 to April 22, 2008. Researchers sought to understand differences among Justices in type of prompts given to lawyers at oral argument. In order to accomplish this, we categorized each prompt by a Justice as one of the following types: open-ended (who, what, when, where, why and how questions); disjunctive (question offers alternative possible answers); yes/no questions; leading questions (question itself suggests desired answer); rhetorical questions; and declarations or statements. These categories were derived from literature in interpersonal communication and legal studies. We hypothesized Supreme Court Justices would fall toward the non-question controlling, rather than open-ended inquisitive, end of what one scholar called the "continuum of control." Results are presented to discuss Justices' information-seeking profiles and the implications for broader communication study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]