A new study found that the Supreme Court's female justices were cut off more quickly than their male colleagues by Chief Justice John Roberts during oral arguments made over the phone last week because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The study's author, Prof. Leah Litman, a legal scholar from the University of Michigan, found that all three of the longest periods of question were from male justices, as were nine of the 12 longest. In contrast, three of the shortest questioning periods ended by Roberts — who was single-handedly policing time allotments due to the restructured argument model — were from female justices, as were eight of the 12 shortest, even though women only comprise 33 percent of the seats on the bench.
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