Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

As Amy Howe reported for SCOTUSblog on Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard just over two hours of oral argument on April 1 in Trump v. Barbara, the challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented or present in the country on temporary visas. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the government. ACLU National Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for a class of affected children and families. Trump attended the argument – the first sitting president to do so – and departed shortly after Sauer finished his presentation.

As much of the legal media (including SCOTUSblog) reported last month, Chief Justice John Roberts offered some rare public remarks in an appearance at Rice University, rebuking personal attacks on judges.

“Personally directed hostility is dangerous,” he said, “and it’s got to stop.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed sympathetic to a Mississippi man who argues that a district attorney violated the Constitution’s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection. Terry Pitchford is on death row for his role in the 2004 robbery and murder of Reuben Britt, who owned a store in Grenada County, Mississippi. At his trial, prosecutor Doug Evans eliminated four potential jurors, all of whom were Black, over the objections of Pitchford’s lawyers.

Welcome to SCOTUSblog’s recurring series in which we interview experts on different supreme courts around the world and how they compare to our own. In our previous columns, we focused on the UK Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada. Today’s column focuses on one of the most fascinating high courts in the world: that of India. To help dispel my profound ignorance of this institution (unusual headlines aside), I corresponded with Professor Rohit De.   

Rohit De is an associate professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of the 2018 book A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic, and, with Ornit Shani, the 2025 book Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History. He has a PhD in history from Princeton University, and law degrees from Yale Law School and the National Law School of India.

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

This term, the Supreme Court’s oral argument docket has had a distinctly public-facing quality. Many of the biggest arguments have involved disputes that reach well beyond the parties and into the country’s political life: redistricting in Louisiana v. Callais, presidential tariff authority in Learning Resources v. Trump, presidential removal power and the Federal Reserve in Trump v. Cook, and birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, which was argued on April 1. Even by the standards of the modern Roberts court, that is a striking concentration of cases touching elections, executive power, and the very architecture of government. That docket has naturally drawn attention to outcomes. But it also offers a useful chance to look at something more granular: the nature of oral argument itself. Which advocates are carrying the heaviest load? Which justices are speaking most often? Which cases become justice-dominated exchanges, and which leave more room for uninterrupted advocacy? And what does that tell us about how the law itself is being shaped?