I highly recommend reading How Appealing‘s 20 Questions for Circuit Judge William Curtis Bryson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit posted yesterday. Circuit Judge Bryson reports how suprising it is that so many lawyers are unprepapred for oral argument:
The thing that most surprises me the most about oral arguments is how unprepared lawyers are. By and large, the judges on our court prepare pretty thoroughly for oral argument (my experience is that the same is true of other federal appellate courts as well). As a result, a lawyer’s lack of preparation sometimes has the awkward consequence that the lawyer knows less about the case than the judges do. We have had stunning instances of lack of preparation in cases before us, such as the failure on the part of one lawyer to have read the case on which the other side principally relied or, on many occasions, the failure to anticipate questions that are so obviously presented by the case that two or more of the judges trip over themselves asking the same question at the outset of the argument. All I can conclude is that people just don’t appreciate the need for preparation or don’t understand the kind of preparation that is necessary. In particular, lawyers do not seem to prepare by examining their own positions critically. I frequently see lawyers react with surprise and annoyance when the judges begin to ask questions that suggest some skepticism about the lawyer’s position.
He also states that if he were arguing before the court, his opening line in every case would start: “The central issue in this case is . . . .”
Finally, I greatly enjoyed Judge Bryson’s comments about his love of astronomy:
There is something magical to me about looking through the telescope at a galaxy cluster hundreds of millions of light years away containing trillions of stars in a single eyepiece field. When you are taking in photons that have been traveling for half a billion years on their way to your retina, it puts into some perspective questions such as whether particular regulatory action was consistent with the agency’s authorizing statute and whether the statute of limitations was equitably tolled.