Federal Judiciary

Tomorrow on SCOTUSblog: Full Coverage of “DC Guns” Oral Argument

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Tomorrow at 10 am eastern, the Court will hear argument in DC v. Heller - better known as the “DC Guns” case - and it is one of the most hotly anticipated oral arguments in recent memory. Only a lucky few will be allowed in the Courtroom tomorrow to watch the hearing, so we’ll be providing full coverage of all of the developments here on SCOTUSblog for everyone else.

The centerpiece of our coverage will be a “LiveBlog” of the oral argument based on the C-SPAN audio feed, and we’ll be debuting a new AJAX-based plugin to bring this to you. You won’t need to do or install anything special to take advantage of this new technology, but with this interface, we’ll be able to “push” updates to you without your needing to refresh your browser as you have in the past. Of course, though we’d love to deliver a true LiveBlog beginning at 10 am with the oral argument (as we have done in the past for the announcement of opinions, and will do again this spring), the Court does not feed oral audio into the press room as it does for opinion announcements, so a true LiveBlog is not possible given the Court’s ban on electronic equipment in the Courtroom. Still, we believe that having a live-updating “transcript” to the C-SPAN feed will allow you to follow the argument far more efficiently than by listening to the audio feed itself. Both the LiveBlog and the C-SPAN broadcast should begin at the close of oral argument, around 11:30 am.

In addition to the LiveBlog, we’ll also be bringing you instant analyses and links to other blogs and news articles, both in the LiveBlog interface and in separate posts. Tom will send his immediate impressions of what transpired at the conclusion of argument, and Lyle will weigh-in with his instant recap as well sometime after that. Overall, we hope that SCOTUSblog will be a resource throughout the day tomorrow for timely updates and analysis of this landmark case as well as a portal for finding further information around the web.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on March 17, 2008 (boomark / email).