When (if ever) it's appropriate to make jokes before the US Supreme Court

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/05/when-if-ever-its-appropriate-to-make-jokes-take-selfies-or-curse-before-the-court/

by mooreds • 2 months ago

66 73 2 months ago

tonetheman• 2 months ago

The Supreme court currently is itself a joke. They are bought and paid for agents of Trump.

It used to matter if you would say such things in court. It does not matter now when the court is loaded with unintelligent purchased ghouls.

lenerdenator• 2 months ago

A growing portion of the population couldn't care less about what's "appropriate" at SCOTUS anymore.

When you basically let your institution be co-opted as a part of a man's effort to run the federal government as a private company intended exclusively for the benefit of himself and his associates, you can expect jokes.

righthand• 2 months ago

The US Supreme Court currently is a joke itself with their Kavanaugh stops laws and other agenda driven politics and mostly in the way the cowardly justices aren’t even providing reasoning or guidance on any of their brain dead rulings to lower courts.

The current Supreme Court has no regard for law and justice for the people of the USA. What a joke.

kstrauser• 2 months ago

Hey, don’t say that! SCOTUS said it’s bad for the country for them to be perceived as partisan. According to them, the correct fix is to stop describing their partisan actions as partisan.

chabes6• 2 months ago

The Supreme Court is the joke… it has lost all credibility with partisan inconsistency and overt bribery.

throw101010• 2 months ago

And you have only one party to blame for this, it also predates all the Trump unhinged cases/decisons and even his first mandate.

Republicans simply suceeded in their plan to take over the federal judiciary branch from the top, in great part with the help of the Federalist Society.

The only answer if Democrats ever take power back is to pack the court now, no amount of unwritten rules following and norms respecting can work against people who abuse the system and packed the court themselves (by unjustifiably blocking candidates nominations which would have balanced the court, for years)

chabes6• 2 months ago

Democrats, while better than republicans in this regard, are also to blame. It is not one or the other.

watwut• 2 months ago

This is downvoted, but true.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 months ago

I wonder if a two-party race to the ethical bottom is the only way to fix things because if underhanded unethical tactics only benefit one party then they won't want to fix it.

0xy• 2 months ago

What bribery?

cumshitpiss• 2 months ago

Clarence Thomas accepted multiple bribes from Harlan Crow

snypher• 2 months ago

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-com...

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/supreme-court-justices-milli...

Etc etc, and that's just one of them, and that's just what's public.

Duwensatzaj• 2 months ago

https://playbill.com/article/watch-supreme-court-justice-ket...

boston_clone• 2 months ago

Clarence and Alito have received gifts that would raise serious scrutiny if they were a “regular” government employee. Here’s a link to the series of articles covering this over the last few years.

https://www.propublica.org/series/supreme-court-scotus

copper-float• 2 months ago

I'm unfamiliar with this, can you elaborate?

chabes6• 2 months ago

Analysis by Fix the Court identified 546 gifts valued at over $4.7 million given to 18 current and former justices, with Justice Clarence Thomas as the primary recipient.

Judicial reform bills have tried to address the issue, but these bills have very little chance of success in the current political environment.

From 2024:

https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hol...

margalabargala3• 2 months ago

They're probably referring to the millions of dollars of gifts Clarence Thomas received over the years, often just prior to ruling in the gift giver's favor.

Here's the source I'm sure you'll want: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/supreme-court-justices-milli...

It's a big surprising thing to hear about for the first time! Glad to help you become familiar.

nefarious_ends• 2 months ago

Are all 4 existing comments here from bots? They’re basically all saying the same thing..

chabes6• 2 months ago

I am a human. I see overlap in thought on a fresh post.

stavros• 2 months ago

That's exactly what a bot would say!

sonofhans• 2 months ago

No, I checked, all look like old accounts run by humans. It’s telling, the common opinion, isn’t it?

plagiarist2• 2 months ago

I'd prefer SCOTUS to blog about when it is appropriate for a justice to fly treason flags supporting insurrectionists or decline to recuse themselves from cases involving their insurrectionist family members.

sophiebits• 2 months ago

This site isn’t affiliated with SCOTUS.

bad_username• 2 months ago

Some people are always prepared to throw political talking points at you, even if you just want to talk about the weather or whether to swear at judges, or something. Can't imagine the perpetual stress of such mental state.

plagiarist2• 2 months ago

"Why are people discussing SCOTUS when the topic is SCOTUS, my goodness."

Yeah, unfortunately these days you have to choose between stressful awareness or (often deliberate) complete ignorance. Sometimes I do wish I was too unintelligent to understand what's wrong, I might be able to enjoy life a bit more.

throwfaraway135• 2 months ago

In modern politics the end justifies the means.

Are you pro abortion? The end justifies the means, because you are saving women.

Are you pro live? The end justifies the means, because you are saving babies.

As long as the playing field is good vs evil there can't be a rational discussion.

xrd• 2 months ago

All that precise language when addressing usually some old guy in black robes (I intentionally put it that way, I'm not in front of the court) reminds me a lot of Japanese formality rules.

It drove me crazy to try to remember and assess not just how to say it in Japanese, but how to change the subject to be honorific, or extra honorific. Or change my own pronoun to ore, boku, watashi, watakushi depending on whether I wanted to try to be intimate or not. Or, remember that damn conjugation rules around converting the sentence to passive, or whatever.

Those rules made me constantly insecure when talking to peers, even when they weren't technically peers. When I did aikido, I was starting as a 1st year in aikido, though I was a 3rd year in college. So, many of my "senpais" were younger but I had to address them a certain way, even when we weren't in the dojo.

All these rules from this article seem like they are designed to give the judges power over the people addressing the court. That seems really strange when I think about it that way. Why do we need to lionize the people, can't their brilliant legal minds carry the full weight of the arguments and decisions?

skinfaxi• 2 months ago

It is about respect for the institution, regardless of the man. It is why judges are addressed as "your honor" or "judge" as it is to their integrity and their office we plead not to them as individuals.

lostdog• 2 months ago

It is because they have power, and want to be addressed this way. And you are likely to lose your case if you don't follow their rules.

arjie2• 2 months ago

Looking at examples of honorific usage:

"yes, officer"

"yes, doctor"

"yes, madam mayor"

"yes, senator"

These are all examples where we do use honorifics. And now for ones where we don't.

"yes, planner"

"yes, assessor"

"yes, child caseworker"

In all the cases, the institution should have integrity and we're not interacting with them as individuals but as agents of the institution. Certainly tax assessors should not be acting on their own personal beliefs but are merely mechanical agents of an impartial tax machine (as judges should be in their domain). However, in some it sounds ridiculous and in others it's natural. The existence of "yes, chef" (in a kitchen) or "yes, coach" (on a team) points to a more general reason: this is a way of expressing that the person with the title has some degree of social standing in the context we're interacting with them in.

There might be a more specific reason we can come up with that is specific to judges, but the general reason suffices to explain it.

ibejoeb• 2 months ago

The post says that "Attempts at humor usually fall flat" but also that it's not humorless. If you've listened anytime recently, oral arguments can have semi-formal tone. Of course there's requisite formality of procedure, and I can't even recall an occasion when that has lapsed, but because these are actual discussions, there is a good amount of rather straightforward talk. Justices regularly construct absurd scenarios to test the limits of arguments, and some of the following argumentation can be pretty funny. It's worth a listening from time to time.

platevoltage2• 2 months ago

You don’t need to. The Supreme Court makes its own jokes.

rho138• 2 months ago

Chief Justice John Roberts states the supreme court isn’t partisan.

jaybrendansmith• 2 months ago

hahahahahahahahahahaha

zombot• 2 months ago

Well, if he does say so himself!

akramachamarei9• 2 months ago

You'll see many comments here complaining about the corruption or partisanship of the Supreme Court. Notably, though, no actual accusations of bribery (gifts to judges from people not involved in cases is not bribery), nor are any opinions articulated on mistakes made by the court in its majorities. Which is to be expected, Hackernews is not populated by lawyers, after all!

I can certainly empathize with people who don't like the outcomes of some recent SCOTUS decisions. I don't like the outcome of Dobbs for example. But picking outcomes is emphatically not the job of the judicial branch, that is Congress' job. The judicial branch is supposed to interpret laws and the Constitution as accurately as possible, but not write them.

N.b. some interesting stats: in the 2024 term, for example, ~40% cases were unanimously decided, and only about 1 in 11 were split along ideological lines, according to this study from scotusblog (ideology calculated as Martin-Quinn score): https://cdn.sanity.io/files/pito4za5/production/d8301fc26d15...

tastyface2• 2 months ago

"gifts to judges from people not involved in cases is not bribery"

Uhhh, yeah that's a big <citation needed> there bud.

If a prominent party member gifts you lavish vacations and you subsequently decide cases along party lines, what else would you call that?

akramachamarei9• 2 months ago

Citation needed? Refer to a dictionary ;). I think the big question mark is on "you subsequently decide cases along party lines." Citation needed? This I think is the major stumbling block in the public perception of the court. It's ideological divides aren't always the one's in the vernacular.

I looked at one of the more vehement and thorough articles alleging the thing you are, and it was pretty unconvincing: https://truthout.org/articles/report-harlan-crow-has-a-stake...

Arodex2• 2 months ago

The judicial branch is supposed to interpret laws and the Constitution as accurately as possible, but not write them.

Yes, it is very obvious the Constitution said the president is immune. And the recent decision on the VRA is completely based on the interpretation that there is no more racial discrimination - which fell apart in the days after.

N.b. some interesting stats: in the 2024 term, for example, ~40% cases were unanimously decided

Now do the statistics for 2025-2026, cherrypicker.

halJordan• 2 months ago

Of this comment and the its parent, this is the comment hurting America. It's unrepentantly belligerent and sarcastic without actually trying prove its contrarian view. You could have at least provided the 2025/6 statistics you claim disprove something. But instead you just levy an insult. All in all, F for effort in being a productive member of society

akramachamarei9• 2 months ago

Not cherrypicking, honest, officer! Anyway, I didn't include those stats since scotusblog hasn't presented them yet... probably because they aren't even done deciding/releasing all the 2025 cases! (And the SCOTUS term is like a college year, it goes from October 2025 to April 2026.) Anyway, out of the decided cases from October 2025 to April 2026, I count 15.5 unanimous out of 28 (more than 50%). (½ unanimous because it was an 8-0 vote.)

I'll have to get back to you about the ideological split. Presumably the MQs haven't changed, so this would be a simple counting exercise. Would need to check the 2024 statpack methodology.

Edit: I counted 2/28 split ideologically. Could go up to 4/28 depending on how you define it. And of course, these stats could change a lot as more decisions come in. But presumably the public perception of ideological divisions is driven by _decided_ cases, and these statistics would suggest that's unfounded.

When (if ever) it's appropriate to make jokes before the US Supreme Court

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