On Nov. 30 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what have become known as the “California prison overcrowding cases.” The court has not heard a case challenging prison conditions and court supervision in decades, and the 1996 Prison Litigation Act (PLA), designed to restrict federal court supervision, has been unexamined until now. The court accepted the state’s appeal (not certiorari) in two consolidated California cases. It then granted a highly unusual extra 20 minutes to the normal hour-long argument, and ran even beyond that until Chief Justice John G. Roberts blew the final whistle. It was a historic moment in the history of these decades-long cases, and in the area of prison litigation in general.
Although an audio file will not be available until today, observers report that the justices were interrupting each other and even raising their voices — an unusual display of frustration in that august body. Indeed, at one point Roberts calmly cut off Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who had interrupted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s question), saying “I’m sorry, could you answer Justice Ginsburg’s question first?”
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