In his foreword to the Clerk’s Annual Report for 2023, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson noted that last fall, the court made two changes in its internal processes regarding oral arguments. It assigned “variable (usually longer) argument times, instead of nominally assigning each party ten minutes and then allowing some arguments to continue longer.” This change was made to enable counsel to “best structure their presentations to give the best performance in support of their clients.” Frequently, the judges engage counsel in quite a bit of questioning and the argument is allowed to continue well beyond the time limit.

While the court increased to 14 the number of arguments it hears on each of the three days a month it sits to hear arguments, overall the court decided only 88 appeals in 2023. Appendix 2. While up from the low point of 81 in 2021 and slightly down from 91 in 2022 (Appendix 3), that is still far from the more than 220 average total dispositions annually during the period from 1993-2015. Newman & Pelzer, “Declining Dispositions of the Court of Appeals”, 85 Albany L. Rev. 925, 934-936 (2022).