I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the

Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week, I'm joined by John Carlo Canaparo and Amy Swear, and we're talking about the court's historic telephone oral arguments, the toilet flush heard around the world, and recent opinions.

And I also chatted with Jim and Allison Ho.

So Monday of this week was a historic event,

the first time in history that the Supreme Court has conducted oral argument by telephone. And each lawyer had a few

minutes to give an opening and then the justices asked questions in order of seniority.

It was a pretty orderly approach. Appellate Twitter went wild when Justice Clarence Thomas asked

questions since he's famously quiet during traditional oral

arguments. And the Chief Justice played traffic cop, as he does in a regular oral argument.

But he let each of his colleagues ask questions for a few minutes at a time before moving it

on to the next. So this meant that certain justices, I won't say any particular names, but certain justices

didn't dominate argument the way we sometimes see. I will say, I thought overall it went pretty

well about as well as it could have gone, but it was a little bit less conversational than a typical

oral argument at the Supreme Court. I also think it's a little too

soon to tell if this will have a broader impact on the court's approach to oral argument and

when it returns for in-person arguments. And it certainly doesn't have any bearing on the

effort, the ongoing effort to bring cameras into the courtroom, which is something I think nearly all of

the justices have said they strongly oppose. So guys, what do you think? I had a question for you

on that, Elizabeth. Do you think that when we return to impersonal arguments, the court will

continue to have an audio feed?

It's a good question.

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