SCOTUSblog on camera: Eric Schnapper (Part six)

Stories from a career of Supreme Court advocacy; what one learns about necessary skills and the value of experienced counsel; and just how hard it is to explain how different Supreme Court advocacy is from anything else a lawyer does.

“Just the way they say, ‘Battle plans never survive contact with the enemy,’ oral argument plans never survive contact with the Court.”

In this six-part interview, Eric Schnapper — Supreme Court advocate and holder of the Betts, Patterson & Mines Professorship in Trial Advocacy at the University of Washington School of Law — discusses his background, from Yale Law School to a twenty-five-year career at the NAACAP Legal Defense Fund to legal academe; how Supreme Court advocacy differs from other legal advocacy; the importance of legal briefs and their relation to oral argument; what one can and cannot prepare for in oral argument; and stories and what one learns from a long career as a Supreme Court advocate.

(Fabrizio di Piazza)