It is not that Kagan is silent at oral argument. She is more talkative than her bow-tied predecessor, Justice John Paul Stevens, who tended to sit quietly through most of each session before gently asking, “May I ask a question?” Kagan asked ten questions on her very first day out last fall. But she actually asked the second-fewest questions this year. Only Thomas spoke less, as in not at all, and the questions Kagan has asked were incisive and quite brief. As one Court observer put it to me this spring after oral argument: “Sotomayor talks. Kagan listens.”

“Her Honor.” — Dahlia Lithwick, New York magazine

See more #longreads from New York magazine