SCOTUSblog on camera: Eric Schnapper (Part five)

Wondering how it went; what to learn from looking back; the importance of moot courts; and why the regular presence of cameras at oral argument is a bad idea.

Just the waythey say,Battle plans never survive contact with the enemy, oral argument plans never survive contact with the Court.

In this six-part interview, Eric Schnapper Supreme Court advocate and holder of the Betts, Patterson & Mines Professorship in Trial Advocacy at the University of Washington School of Law discusses his background, from Yale Law School to a twenty-five-year career at the NAACAP Legal Defense Fund to legal academe; how Supreme Court advocacy differs from other legal advocacy; the importance of legal briefs and their relation to oral argument; what one can and cannot prepare for in oral argument; and stories and what one learns from a long career as a Supreme Court advocate.