The Oyez Project in the United States

Introduction: OYEZ – Listen to U.S. Supreme Court Arguments

The Project started in 1996 by Jerry Goldman (from the Northwestern University) and the Northwestern University. It finished in 2001.

OYEZ contained over 550 briefs of the Supreme Court’s most important constitutional cases. Each brief offered a hot-link to the FindLaw database, where the complete text of each opinion may be read. For cases heard since 1956, OYEZ provided the authentic Real-Audio recordings of oral arguments and the Court’s announcement of its opinion. Moreover, OYEZ provided biographical sketches of all the justices, summaries of what happened in the Court on any given day since its founding, the ability to search for cases by their U.S. citation, title, party names, subject, and/or docket number, and a virtual reality tour of the Court and its surroundings. For example, the OYEZ Project offered a “virtual” tour of the Supreme Court building.

The meaning of the word “Oyez”

The OYEZ project takes its name from the phrase by which the Marshal of the Court calls the courtroom to order. OYEZ is pronounced “o-yay” or “o-yez” or “o-yes.” It is used three times in succession to introduce the opening of a court of law. The origin of the word Oyez is Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, hear ye, imperative plural of oyer, to hear. from Latin audire.

The history of OYEZ is illuminating. “Hearing the cry ‘Oyez, oyez, oyez’ in a courtroom may have puzzled more than one auditor, especially if pronounced ‘o-yes.’ This cry serves to remind us that up until the 18th century, speaking English in a British court of law was not required and that one could use Law French, a form of French that evolved after the Norman Conquest, when Anglo-Norman became the language of the official class in England. Oyez descends from the Anglo-Norman oyez, the plural imperative of oyer, ‘to hear’; thus oyez means ‘hear ye’ and was used as a call for silence and attention. Although it would have been much heard in Medieval England, it is first recorded as an English word fairly late in the Middle English period, in a work composed around 1425.” (SOURCE: American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Tools and Materials of the OYEZ Project

The OYEZ Project contained many hundreds of hours of audio materials delivered through a free player available from Real.com. It used the free version of RealPlayer 8 (Basic), but some audio resources did only play if the user used RealPlayer version 6.0 or higher.

Looking for a case that is not in The OYEZ Project

There were many reasons why you may not find a case in The OYEZ Project. The Project provided abstracts and other materials for leading cases in constitutional law decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. Cases which fall outside the domain of constitutional law were not abstracted in The OYEZ Project. But if the case was decided after 1893, there are ofthe projects, like the Lawi Project, which is a good source for the complete opinion. Lawi is also a good source for non-Supreme Court opinions.

The OYEZ Project aimed to include all leading constitutional law cases into its database. It had scoured most case- and textbooks in the field to identify the leading cases.

“On the Docket”

It is possible to attend an actual oral argument at the Supreme Court. The interested person should determine whether or not the Court will be hearing arguments during the period when you plan to be in Washington DC. It was a component to The OYEZ Project called “On the Docket” that provided this information. Alternatively, the user can simply call the Supreme Court and ask for the Clerk’s Office.

Time of Supreme Court audio materials

The Supreme Court releases all its audio materials to the National Archives in November following the Term in which cases were argued. The National Archives must accession the audio materials and make copies for use by research archivists. This process takes several months. Then the Oyez Project acquired copies, digitized them, cleaned them of marginal “pops and whistles,” encoded them, and finally stored them in our database. Therefore, users expected to find new audio materials on The OYEZ Project approximately 10 months following the Term in which cases were argued in the Court.

Credits

• Principal Investigator: Jerry Goldman
• Advisory Committee: Professor Lee Epstein, Washington University, St. Louis; Professor Jim Riley, Regis University, Denver; Professor William M. Wiecek, Syracuse University School of Law
• Site Administrator and Programmer: Tony Becker
• Visual and Curriculum Design Specialist: Dennis Glenn
• Major support: National Endowment for the Humanities “Teaching with Technology” program, National Science Foundation, and the M.R. Bauer Foundation.
• Additional support: NU Academic Technologies Department, Northwestern University Library and Mayer, Brown and Platt.