Like, really not to be funny, but OA in the current format only works if the justices already have put in the work to be completely up-to-speed on all of the relevant issues and know the background intimately, and the thing is: they don't.
And I don't mean that as hur-be-dur scotus are bad. More that in a *lot* of cases, their Qs are rudimentary, and reveal a lack of depth in what are often pretty dense sub-fields. And what they need is (very bluntly) to sit and watch a comprehensive presentation by the parties before asking Qs.
Like, seriously. Watch a few cases at ICJ or UK or CA Supreme Courts, and it's not just a stylistic change, they're just also much, much more information dense
Other appellate courts that function independently in the current scotus style are error-correcting courts: a particular question of law decided below is being reviewed as a question of law.
SCOTUS is not, its functioning as a trial court where John Roberts imagines the litigants & facts
For me it's more just to make the point that SCOTUS could do with really a total overhaul that includes, but doesn't have to be limited to, its membership
Or IOW, "9 people who didn't do the reading try to rhetorically trip up a lawyer who's got half an hour to persuade them that Hamilton didn't say women can't have driver's licenses" is a bad way to make permanent changes to the national social contract
