In a long-running collaboration with Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag applies computational text analysis to United States Supreme Court oral argument — mining decades of transcripts to measure, at scale, how the Justices actually behave. This is empirical legal studies and text data mining applied to the Court itself: the same computational techniques whose copyright status Sag defends in his doctrinal work.
What the work found
- Taking the Measure of Ideology: Empirically Measuring Supreme Court Cases, 98 Georgetown Law Journal 1 (2009), developed a new way to measure the ideological content of Supreme Court cases, and Ideology and Exceptionalism in Intellectual Property, 97 California Law Review 801 (2009) (with Jacobi & Maxim Sytch), showed that ideology significantly predicts IP outcomes at the Court.
- The New Oral Argument: Justices as Advocates, 94 Notre Dame Law Review 1161 (2019), documented a structural transformation of oral argument: the Justices increasingly use argument time for advocacy directed at one another rather than inquiry directed at counsel.
- Taking Laughter Seriously at the Supreme Court, 72 Vanderbilt Law Review 1423 (2019), analyzed every laughter episode in decades of arguments, showing how courtroom humor tracks power and advocacy rather than mere levity.
- Supreme Court Interruptions and Interventions, 103 Boston University Law Review 1741 (2023), measured how the Chief Justice’s management of interruptions has changed the dynamics of argument, and SCOTUS in the Time of COVID (Law & Policy 2023, with Eve Ringsmuth and Timothy R. Johnson) and Oral Argument in the Time of COVID: The Chief Plays Calvinball (2021) tracked how the pandemic’s telephonic format reshaped Justice behavior.
- The Paradox of Intellectual Property at the U.S. Supreme Court, 41 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 135 (2025), examines the depoliticization of IP at the Court, and What If? Hypotheticals and Doctrinal Exploration at Supreme Court Oral Argument, 78 Florida Law Review (forthcoming 2026), studies how hypotheticals do doctrinal work.
Why it matters
Oral argument is the only part of the Supreme Court’s decision process the public can observe directly. By treating the transcripts as a dataset — hundreds of thousands of utterances across decades — this research replaces anecdote with measurement: how advocacy, gender, seniority, ideology, and institutional change actually shape what happens in the courtroom. The findings are regularly used by scholars of judicial behavior, court commentators, and advocates preparing for argument.
Key publications
- Taking the Measure of Ideology, 98 Georgetown L.J. 1 (2009)
- The New Oral Argument: Justices as Advocates, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1161 (2019) (SSRN)
- Taking Laughter Seriously at the Supreme Court, 72 Vand. L. Rev. 1423 (2019) (SSRN)
- Supreme Court Interruptions and Interventions, 103 B.U. L. Rev. 1741 (2023) (SSRN)
- The Paradox of Intellectual Property at the U.S. Supreme Court, 41 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 135 (2025) (SSRN)