Schubert, James N., Steven A. Peterson, Glendon Schubert, and Stephen Wasby. "Observing Supreme Court Oral Argument: A Biosocial Approach." Politics and the Life Sciences, 11, 1 (February, 1992):35-51.
Abstract. Supreme Court oral argument (OA) is one of many face-to-face settings of political interaction. Drawing upon transcripts and audio recordings as primary source materials, this article describes and illustrates a methodology for the systematic observation and measurement of behavior in OA developed in an NSF supported study of over 300 randomly selected cases from the 1969-1981 terms of the U.S. Supreme Court. The importance of OA for Supreme Court decision making is largely a function of the opportunities it provides for justices to clarify their uncertainties about a case and to persuade one another about the issues and claims raised. Relative to these functions, indicators are selected to measure properties of (1) form and intentionality, (2) expression of emotion, and (3) the substantive verbal content in justices' questions to counsel. Five sources of observation are integrated into the OA database at the speaking turn level of analysis: (1) the actual text of verbal behavior, (2) categorical behavior codes, (3) aspects of language use and speech behavior events, (4) electro-acoustical measurement of voice quality, and (5) content analysis of subject matter. Preliminary data are presented to illustrate the methodology and its application to theoretical concerns of the research project.