

Simple predictor of supreme court cases: which side is asked more questions - fleaflicker
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/us/26bar.html

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mdasen
There could be a simpler explanation: the Justices are asking the side which
is inherently unlikely to win more questions because they have a greater need
to justify their case. If you're arguing what is likely to win by the logic of
the status quo or dominant paradigm, there's almost no need to state your case
- the Justices will already know the logic and arguments behind your case. If
you're fighting from the opposite side, there are a lot more questions,
clarifications, etc. that need to be made to understand your position. And
you're still likely to lose even if you've made a good case because you have
the inherently weaker case.

Basically, what I'm arguing, is that the Justices generally know the arguments
for the stronger case and so there isn't a lot of questions to be asked, but
want to give the weaker case an opportunity to make their case and prove that
they, in fact, have a stronger case. However, it's unlikely coming from the
weaker side that you'll have the stronger case in the end.

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endtime
What you say is probably true, but it doesn't negate the claim; rather, it
justifies it. The question distribution is still a good predictor of the
outcome.

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lincolnq
Correlation doesn't imply causation! This newspaper article seems to take this
simple observation and twist it into "don't let the judges ask you questions".
As far as I can tell, there's no evidence for this causal relationship.

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jhancock
interesting stat. But calling it a predictor may be a stretch as it does
little to help either side make decisions as to how far to push a case. Once
your making oral arguments in front of the highest court, there is little room
left for such a stat to be useful.

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stcredzero
Interesting. So the more you can affirm the views of the judges, the more
likely you are to win. If you pique the interest or curiosity of the judges,
the more likely you are to lose. That's disturbing. To me that's the stance
the least likely to get at the truth.

I wonder if there's a highly intelligent and advanced alien civilization out
there that would view our adversarial judicial system a mere refinement on
"trial by combat."

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olefoo
The agonistic system used in jurisdictions inheriting from english common law
is trial by combat. It's supposed to work that way.

The requirement of a disinterested judge, the structured dialogue of
contending opinions; the whole notion of facing the accuser directly and of
having a champion to represent your interests fall out of this.

There are other judicial systems where a judge-advocate investigates and is
supposed to arrive at the truth (mostly in nations that inherit from the
Napoleonic Code); but anglo-saxon justice is explicitly a substitute for the
duel.

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pierrefar
I wonder what this kind of analysis will find if applied to the high courts of
other countries. Of course, we'll need to control for how the high court
judges are installed in the different countries. Could make for a very
interesting comparison.

