This is the week that the Supreme Court, done with its regular argument sessions, enters the stretch run.
While it is too soon for substantive appraisals of the first year of the Roberts court, it is not too soon for stylistic observations about what is clearly, in the view of lawyers who have appeared there this term, a different court.
"The tone has changed," Prof. Richard J. Lazarus of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he runs the Supreme Court Institute and teaches a course on Supreme Court advocacy, said on Tuesday.
In common with every other Supreme Court specialist contacted for this article, Professor Lazarus listed several obvious changes. "They're not stepping on each other," he said of the justices. "They take longer before someone asks the first question. They give the lawyers more time to answer."
Beth S. Brinkmann, like Professor Lazarus a veteran of the solicitor general's office, who now represents private clients before the court, said of the new courtroom experience: "You sit there and think, 'Whoa, isn't anyone going to ask a question?'"
Details here from the New York Times.