The Supreme Spectacle: An Analysis of Public Attendance at the Supreme Court

Abstract

While many are aware that the Supreme Court allocates seats for the public to view oral arguments, substantive analyses that have measured the motivations for attendance are lacking. I analyze who attends oral arguments using a descriptive approach with a novel dataset of public attendance at Supreme Court oral arguments during the 2019 term. A concurrent assessment of interviews conducted on argument days illustrates notable differences among the motivations of prospective attendees. I conclude by noting that although the linkage between latent case salience and the demand for admission to arguments is not neatly discernable, attendance at the Supreme Court offers an interesting divergence from perceptions of attendance in a traditional courtroom setting.

Keywords:

• Supreme court
• public opinion
• civic engagement

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the incredible team at SCOTUSblog, without whom this research note would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard Vining and Dr. Teena Wilhelm at the University of Georgia for their guidance in developing this work. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Justin Wedeking (University of Kentucky) and others for their commentary at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.

Notes

1 SCOTUSblog’s Courtroom Access Special Feature is retrievable at: https://www.scotusblog.com/category/special-features/courtroom-access-2020/

2 Vining and Wilhelm (2010) explore this dynamic through the lens of state supreme courts and find that having a public information officer does not influence levels of media coverage.

3 A summary of the cases heard during the 2019-2020 Supreme Court term is available from SCOTUSblog at: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2019/

4 For example, the cross-term comparisons in opinion authorship, majority opinion (coalition) sizes, and issue area designations for the cases did not exhibit any dramatic variation.

5 Multiple overtures were made to the Office of the Marshal at the Supreme Court for additional information and data related to attendance at the Court’s oral arguments, all of which were denied.

6 It should be noted that data drawn from cases slated for March 2020 might have been impacted by the early stages of the pandemic, though deriving a direct causal linkage is not feasible. Most notably, attendance in June Medical v. Russo (argued March 4, 2020), a notable case concerning abortion, might have been deterred due to early public health concerns.

7 This approximation is based on a combination of the direct disclosure of individuals’ names recorded by SCOTUSblog to correspond with the interview, as well as times when the researchers included an approximation of the number of attendees in a group interviewed collectively – e.g., “[name omitted] + Georgetown University Law students and professor/TA” or “[name omitted] + 2 peers.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jake S. Truscott

Jake S. Truscott is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.