The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court arguments over President Donald Trump's travel ban moved swiftly with the justices' questions barely giving the advocates time to catch a breath or a sip of water.

Two skilled Supreme Court veterans faced off in Trump v. Hawaii: U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco for the government and Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal for Hawaii. Francisco and Katyal, a former acting solicitor general during the Obama administration, embraced after the intense arguments ended.







By the end of the arguments, there appeared to be a majority that could favor the Trump administration. Here are eight questions drawn from many more posed by the eight justices who spoke during the argument session:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor to Francisco:

“But what I see the president doing here is saying, 'I'm going to add more to the limits that Congress set and to what Congress said was enough.' Where does a president get the authority to do more than Congress has already decided is adequate?”

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to Katyal:

“Your argument based on discrimination based on the campaign statements, is there a statute of limitations on that, or is that a ban from presidential findings for the rest of the administration?”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Francisco:

“You mentioned 1182(f). And the worrisome thing about this is that the president acts; Congress is the one responsible for making the laws about immigration. It has been suggested in one of the briefs that we read 1182(f) to allow the president to suspend entry but only for a period of time long enough for Congress to say yea or nay.”

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. to Katyal:

“Mr. Katyal, would any reasonable observer reading this proclamation, without taking into account statements, think that this was a Muslim ban? The population of the predominantly Muslim countries on this list make up about 8 percent of the world's Muslim population. So would a reasonable observer think this was a Muslim ban?”

Justice Neil Gorsuch to Katyal:

“We have this troubling rise of this nationwide injunction, cosmic injunction not limited to relief for the parties at issue or even a class action. And near as I can tell, that's a really new development where a district court asserts the right to strike down a federal statute with regard to anybody anywhere in the world. What do we do about that?”

Justice Elena Kagan to Francisco:

“So let's say in some future time, a president gets elected who is a vehement anti-Semite and says all kinds of denigrating comments about Jews and provokes a lot of resentment and hatred over the course of a campaign and in his presidency and, in the course of that, asks his staff or his cabinet to issue recommendations so that he can issue a proclamation of this kind, and they dot all the i's and they cross all the t's. And what emerges—again, in the context of this virulent anti-Semitism—is a proclamation that says no one shall enter from Israel. Do you say Mandel puts an end to judicial review of that set of facts? This is an out-of-the-box kind of president in my hypothetical.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy to Francisco:

“Suppose you have a local mayor and, as a candidate, he makes vituperative hate—hateful statements, he's elected, and on day two, he takes acts that are consistent with those hateful statements. You would say whatever he said in the campaign is irrelevant?”

Justice Stephen Breyer to Francisco:

“It seems to me that there are probably a significant number of such people [eligible for case-by-case waivers of the travel ban]. And you read the briefs, you think, hey, there's the business community complaining, there's the academic community, there were 46 scholars at Harvard, there are families in the Lisa Blatt brief, you know, that they say we were trying to get medical treatment and nobody told us about this. … If you have done the same thing that the Reagan people did and the Carter people did, then it might be—I'm not expressing a definite opinion—but, well, you've got the same thing here, but if this is, as one brief says, just window dressing and they never apply it—then you have something new and different going well beyond what President Reagan did. So I want to know how do I find out—how do I find out when there is not that information in the brief, where do we have to—can we have another hearing? Do we send it back?”

Justice Clarence Thomas did not ask any questions during the arguments.