In our next two posts, we’re reviewing the data for the Court’s oral arguments in criminal cases during 2018.

In all, the Justices asked 1,103 questions of appellants and 896 of appellees.

That works out to 22.06 questions to the appellant, and 17.92 to the appellee.

We’ve shown before that most argument analytics studies have shown that the party getting more questions is likely to lose.  In criminal affirmances last year, appellants averaged 24.06 questions and appellees 15.28.

In split decisions – cases where the Court affirmed in part and reversed in part – appellants averaged 16.4 questions to appellees’ 11.8 questions.

In reversals, as expected, the party defending the Court of Appeal’s decision tended to get questioned more heavily – 26.77 questions for appellees, 19.31 questions for appellants.

Join us back here next time as we take a closer look at the individual Justices’ question patterns.

Image courtesy of Flickr by daveynin (no changes).