Abstract Objective For years, scholars have employed Justice Harry Blackmun's private grades of attorneys to measure attorney oral argument quality. Using archival data, I analyze whether Justice Blackmun experienced order effects. Methods I estimate numerous ordinary least squares regression models on private archival data. Results Blackmun's respondent grades appear to have been influenced by his perceptions of how the petitioners performed. This finding holds across a series of checks, including those that examine whether some cases simply attract better or worse attorneys. Conclusion The results suggest that scholars should not use the Blackmun grades as “point estimates” but, instead, as rankings. They also suggest that previous findings may have overstated the influence of oral argument. The fact that one justice displayed evidence of a cognitive illusion also suggests that such effects may exist in various aspects of decision making.
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