Introduction Oral arguments and briefs have a great influence on jurists’ decisions in the courts. In his book, Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court, Timothy Johnson notes that judges consider a number of issues such as oral arguments, political considerations, and external factors, which are not part of the case records prior to making an ultimate decision in a particular case. Conventionally, jurists do not decide on how to decree on a particular case before listening to it. The intent of this paper is to affirm that oral arguments affect how judges make decisions in courts and in this particular instance, in the Supreme Court. The paper begins by a summary of a reading Timothy Johnson’s book, Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court . Summary of the oral arguments and decision-making on the US Supreme Court Johnson argues that advocates should not use oral argument as a tool for influencing judges, but rather for accomplishing the goals that the judges have set. He further asserts that conscious of the existing external factors that might influence the process of decision-making and the need for creating strong internal coalitions, judges capitalize on the arguments to get facts, form legal, and procedure matters for conference deliberation, and finally use them to develop their written judgments (Johnson 28). Johnson presents a properly researched writing that helps students comprehend how strategic decision-making is achieved in the Supreme Court. Johnson notes that litigation involves the presentation of legal problems in two opposing sides with the exemption of the amicus briefs, with the two opposing sides presenting their arguments on biased grounds (26). Conscious of the bias-based arguments, judges utilize oral argument as a tool for determining issues, which are of greatest importance irrespective of whether they were tabled by advocates. How oral arguments affect decision-making in the Supreme Court In his book, Johnson refers to a number of cases tackled in the 1970-80s and uses them to compare the briefs presented by the parties and the questions that developed during the oral argument session. The aim of the latter is to determine if the court simply requests the parties to explicate the issues that they wrote in their briefs or they go past the issues outlined in the briefs and seek clarification on new developments. According to Johnson, most issues raised by judges, close to 80%, are new concerns that were not tackled by the parties and amicus (98). Furthermore, in instances where the jurists raise issues in relation to the briefs, they mainly seek to understand how particular issues in the briefs affect public policy. In essence, judges are concerned with how the litigants’ briefs influence external factors, for instance as the Congress to help them determine policy options that should adopt in coming to a particular conclusion. Indeed, oral argument plays a critical, but distinct role for advocates and judges. When an advocate presents his or her oral argument, he or she is able to clarify facts related to the cases that helps the judges when examining what the case actually entails (Johnson 47)