It’s always tricky and often dangerous to predict the result of a case from an oral argument, but the Vice President may be able to take some comfort in today’s proceedings before the D.C. Circuit. There seemed to be a couple of competing theories vying for supremacy among the judges on the bench, both of which would result in victory for the Veep. Judge Harry Edwards, who voted to deny review of the case the first time it was on appeal to his court (only to have that decision reversed by the Supreme Court), along with some of his colleagues, was asking a lot of questions that seemed to suggest that the Vice President had already established that the National Energy Policy Development Group had fully complied with the governing law, known as the Federal Advisory Committee, and that if the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch couldn’t come up with any evidence of wrongdoing on its own, the case would have to be dismissed. Other judges — notably two of my favorites John Roberts and A. Raymond Randolph — asked many questions suggesting that they were more troubled that the Vice President had to answer to the courts at all for the Presidents formation of the NEPDG, i.e., that the constitution prevents the application to the President and Vice President of a law that requires disclosure of with whom they and their closest advisors met in formulating national energy legislation. If either theory were to prevail, the case, which has taken over three and a half years and substantial government time to litigate, would finally come to an end. The second theory — if it can be called that, since no one really knows what the court is thinking — would prevent a redux of this kind of litigation in the future and would ease the burden of litigation on the Executive. But the first wouldn’t be half-bad either. It’s a long way from where all of this started. For my early takes on the case, see here and here.