US Supreme Court Argument Order Gives Unlucky Lawyers Less Time

By the time Daniel Geyser got to the Supreme Court lectern, he was getting hungry.

The banana and oatmeal the Colorado-based lawyer had eaten for breakfast around 8:30 that morning were long gone. The caffeine from his coffee had worn off.

Geyser hadn’t anticipated arguments in the case ahead of his on April 22 would go for almost 2 1/2 hours. He would have timed his breakfast better if he had.

“You ideally want to be awake,” he said.

The format the justices adopted after the pandemic stretched arguments to new lengths, but this term’s proceedings in the first case ...