*This article was first posted on October 18, 2021.
Since 1955, oral arguments of the United States Supreme Court have been recorded and preserved. Also, in 1968, the Court started printing transcripts of those arguments. Recordings and transcripts of the Court’s oral arguments can be obtained through the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which serves as their official repository. Unfortunately, only some recordings are available online through the National Archives Catalog. However, there other places online where you can listen to audio of Supreme Court arguments.
The audio recordings of oral arguments that are found on the website of the Supreme Court go back to 2010. Audio files may be downloaded, or they may be listened to on the site. Conveniently, recordings of oral arguments are posted on the website on the same day that they are heard by the Court. Transcripts of the arguments are, also, found on the site.
According to its website, “Oyez (pronounced OH-yay)—a free law project from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law—is a multimedia archive devoted to making the Supreme Court of the United States accessible to everyone.” Here, you can find searchable audio, along with synchronized transcripts.
The audio collected here has been gathered by Free Law Project. In addition to audio of oral arguments of the Supreme court, audio recordings of oral arguments from other appellate courts can be found on the site.
If you wish to locate transcripts of United States Supreme Court arguments, instead, they can be found in several places online, including within some of the databases of the Lucille Stewart Beeson Law Library. If you need assistance with locating these transcripts, please feel free to contact a Reference Librarian at lawref@samford.edu.
