Amy Howe

Dec 12 2022

Court will resume opinion announcements from the bench, but won’t provide live audio

The Supreme Court will resume its pre-pandemic practice of announcing opinions from the bench, the court’s Public Information Office said on Monday afternoon. But although the justices now provide live audio of oral arguments, the opinion announcements will not be livestreamed. Instead, consistent with the court’s pre-pandemic practice, the audio of opinion announcements will not be available until the beginning of the following term.

The resumption of in-person opinion announcements marks another step in the court’s slow return to business as usual since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The court closed to the public on March 12, 2020; later that month, the justices began to release opinions online, without taking the bench. And although they returned to the courtroom, with access limited to a small group of reporters and law clerks, in October 2021, they continued to release opinions electronically throughout the 2021-22 term.

Since the start of the 2022-23 term in October, members of the public have been permitted to attend oral arguments. The court continued its pandemic practice of providing live audio of oral arguments – a departure from its prior practice of releasing argument audio only at the end of the week. Audio of opinion announcements, however, will only be available at the beginning of the following term, when the court releases it to the National Archives.

The Supreme Court has not yet released any opinions in the cases argued in the 2022-23 term. The court is not scheduled to take the bench again until January 2023.

This post is also published on SCOTUSblog.

Amy L Howe
Until September 2016, Amy served as the editor and reporter for SCOTUSblog, a blog devoted to coverage of the Supreme Court of the United States; she continues to serve as an independent contractor and reporter for SCOTUSblog. Before turning to full-time blogging, she served as counsel in over two dozen merits cases at the Supreme Court and argued two cases there. From 2004 until 2011, she co-taught Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School; from 2005 until 2013, she co-taught a similar class at Harvard Law School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Vanderbilt Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master’s degree in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
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