Persuading the Supreme Court

One of the issues about persuasion that we discuss in AP Lang is the issue of form versus content.  What matters more, how you say it or what you say?  And the answer to that question often depends upon the situation, the medium, and the person delivering the message.  An LA Times article today highlighted that issue as it applies to the Supreme Court case concerning the Obama administration's new health care law.

In the article, four Constitutional scholars were asked to evaluate both sides' arguments, and three out of four focused mainly on how the lawyers representing both sides sounded, saying things like........

• "To no one's surprise, Paul Clement has been extremely persuasive on the part of the challengers.... He's famous for being able to make arguments without notes, without stutters. The arguments this week showed his skill again."

•  "I thought Clement looked very impressive, very smooth, very present, never at a loss for an answer.  Both Verrilli and Kneedler, they didn't look as good. They were stumbling for words, having a hard time coming up with crisp answers. It looked to me like Clement did the better job of oral advocacy."

Two of the experts went on to discuss how content would dominate the justice's deliberations of the issue, but all conceded that the effectiveness of oral argument would still play an important role.  It's an interesting issue that is core to the teaching of rhetoric.  It would be nice to think that the person who makes the most logical argument on an issue will win every time, but we're humans, and we often require more than logic to persuade us.