Imagine that???!!!! Anal??? Dunno, but wtf cares???

And then you could just walk in and say:

"May it please the court to rule favorably on the motion in my briefs."

Prolly even less if they tweet. (As much as iH8 tweeting.)

I was going to explain it to you.

Please proceed.

in advance, and then just to make their point a little clearer, they'll have oral arguments where both sides get to present their case with spoken word in front of the judges or justices, take questions, respond to each other's points in real time. In state court, at least in Alaska, you have to specifically request oral argument if you want to go through that hearing process before the judge. Otherwise, the judge will just rule based on the arguments in the written motion, opposition and reply, and that's that. I don't know if they ever do that in the Supreme Court or if they always have oral arguments on every matter that they decide to take up. Probably somebody here knows more about that than I do.

You are saying that the oral part comes after they look through the parties' briefs, and if they like what they see in your briefs, then you get oral before a favorable ruling is made on your motion.

Cool.

But if you want oral, you have to specifically ask for it.

(You're funny.)

I think he's about to go off the reservation and do something ground-breaking. He's very, very interested in situations where federal law trumps state law (for example tax stuff, or soldiers on duty) and where there's been precedent for the courts overruling everybody. I wouldn't be surprised to see DOMA gone, Prop 8 gone with a wide ruling and Scalia writing at least one of them.