-: My name is James Graves.
I'm a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals
for the fifth circuit.
It's important that, I think, for people to understand
that we are typically not in court very often.
When I say not in court, it's a very small percentage
of our cases that we hear oral argument.
And when we hear oral argument, of course,
that's just the lawyers appearing before us
arguing the cases based on briefs that they've written,
issues that they contend were wrongly decided
in the court below.
So most of my job is reading and writing.
Reading briefs.
Reading the records from what happened in the lower courts
and then writing opinions in those cases.
We'll get the briefs, maybe, six weeks or so
before the sitting and so we begin reading the briefs.
The clerks will prepare bench memos
in connection with the cases.
I typically sit with each one of my clerks individually
and we go over the cases one by one.
So there, there's a month or so of work
leading up to that week of oral argument.
Lawyers come in, they argue the cases,
usually it's 20 minutes per side for oral argument,
and then post oral argument,
the judges will meet, conference the cases, talk about
the case among the three judges
'cause we sit in three judge panels.
Opinions are written and you're trying to get those right.
You're trying to see where they're not getting,
you know, who agrees with what, did you put any opinion
you've typically taken a preliminary vote
and then ultimately an opinion comes out of that.
But again, that's a small percentage of the cases.
So a number of the cases are handled on a summary calendar
where there is no oral argument.
Sometimes it's a summary disposition.
Other times it's a little more involved
'cause there are some that you can clearly
and kind of similarly dismiss.
Others take more scrutiny, more involvement, more research,
but you can still dispose of on a summary calendar
and then, a smaller percentage ends up
on the oral argument calendar.
Often times, there are issues which are
pretty nuanced.
There can be case log going this way.
Case log going the other way.
And so you're reading that.
You're saying, well this case seems to suggest this outcome,
this case seems to suggest the opposite outcome,
and so you're reviewing all of that
and trying to get it right under the law
and under your determination about what law plays out
these particular facts and then what outcome
there should be based on the application
of that law to these facts.