4 ms·

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

66 points by mooreds 6mo ago

tonetheman 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
chabes 6mo ago
The Supreme Court is the joke… it has lost all credibility with partisan inconsistency and overt bribery.
- sieabahlpark 6mo ago
  [dead]
- throw101010 6mo 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)
  - chabes 6mo ago
    Democrats, while better than republicans in this regard, are also to blame. It is not one or the other.
    - platevoltage 6mo ago
      Could you elaborate?
    - miltonlost 6mo ago
      Nah, it's really just Republicans doing all the corruption these days at the SUpreme Court. Unless you can provide some decent examples of Democrats. You seem to be bothsidesing the issue when McConnell stole multiple seats.
    - lostlogin 6mo ago
      How so? The judiciary is stacked with compromised individuals. the republicans did this.
      - chabes 6mo ago
        Obama should have picked a replacement for RBG. Biden and the democratic congress should have done more to get the judiciary back in line. They had their opportunities.
nefarious_ends 6mo ago
Are all 4 existing comments here from bots? They’re basically all saying the same thing..
- chabes 6mo ago
  I am a human. I see overlap in thought on a fresh post.
  - stavros 6mo ago
    That's exactly what a bot would say!
    - chabes 6mo ago
      Lol, that gets an upvote from me. I actually like to call out AI shortcomings https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507666#47513216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507666#47513216 Also, hope I’m not succumbing to AI psychosis, and starting to talk more like a bot. Autism be like that sometimes.
- sonofhans 6mo ago
  No, I checked, all look like old accounts run by humans. It’s telling, the common opinion, isn’t it?
plagiarist 6mo 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 6mo ago
  This site isn’t affiliated with SCOTUS.
- bad_username 6mo 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.
  - plagiarist 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
    - lacewing 6mo ago
      On some superficial level, sure: you have to follow the rules because if you don't, it won't end well for you. But the reason for these rules isn't just self-aggrandizement. Ultimately, the court is there to implement a procedure. The procedure wasn't invented by the judges; in criminal cases, it's there to give you some protection from the rest of the government, which could otherwise use its police powers to put you in prison based on a whim. The protection isn't perfect, but it beats the alternative. The court would not be able to carry out that procedure if, for example, anyone could just constantly talk over the judges and not let them get a word in. So there is a pecking order in the courtroom, but mostly because you couldn't have courts without it.
ibejoeb 6mo 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.
platevoltage 6mo ago
You don’t need to. The Supreme Court makes its own jokes.
rho138 6mo ago
Chief Justice John Roberts states the supreme court isn’t partisan.
- jaybrendansmith 6mo ago
  hahahahahahahahahahaha
- zombot 6mo ago
  Well, if he does say so himself!
akramachamarei 6mo 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/d8301fc26d152ddfb9a09a8ac8845be5d5785ada.pdf https://cdn.sanity.io/files/pito4za5/production/d8301fc26d15...
- tastyface 6mo 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?
  - akramachamarei 6mo 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-in-4-scotus-cases-and-thomas-hasnt-recused https://truthout.org/articles/report-harlan-crow-has-a-stake...
    - UncleMeat 6mo ago

66 points by mooreds 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.

chabes 6mo ago

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

sieabahlpark 6mo ago
[dead]
throw101010 6mo 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)
- chabes 6mo ago
  Democrats, while better than republicans in this regard, are also to blame. It is not one or the other.
  - platevoltage 6mo ago
    Could you elaborate?
  - miltonlost 6mo ago
    Nah, it's really just Republicans doing all the corruption these days at the SUpreme Court. Unless you can provide some decent examples of Democrats. You seem to be bothsidesing the issue when McConnell stole multiple seats.
  - lostlogin 6mo ago
    How so? The judiciary is stacked with compromised individuals. the republicans did this.
    - chabes 6mo ago
      Obama should have picked a replacement for RBG. Biden and the democratic congress should have done more to get the judiciary back in line. They had their opportunities.

nefarious_ends 6mo ago

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

chabes 6mo ago
I am a human. I see overlap in thought on a fresh post.
- stavros 6mo ago
  That's exactly what a bot would say!
  - chabes 6mo ago
    Lol, that gets an upvote from me. I actually like to call out AI shortcomings https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507666#47513216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507666#47513216 Also, hope I’m not succumbing to AI psychosis, and starting to talk more like a bot. Autism be like that sometimes.
sonofhans 6mo ago
No, I checked, all look like old accounts run by humans. It’s telling, the common opinion, isn’t it?

plagiarist 6mo 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 6mo ago
This site isn’t affiliated with SCOTUS.
bad_username 6mo 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.
- plagiarist 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
  - lacewing 6mo ago
    On some superficial level, sure: you have to follow the rules because if you don't, it won't end well for you. But the reason for these rules isn't just self-aggrandizement. Ultimately, the court is there to implement a procedure. The procedure wasn't invented by the judges; in criminal cases, it's there to give you some protection from the rest of the government, which could otherwise use its police powers to put you in prison based on a whim. The protection isn't perfect, but it beats the alternative. The court would not be able to carry out that procedure if, for example, anyone could just constantly talk over the judges and not let them get a word in. So there is a pecking order in the courtroom, but mostly because you couldn't have courts without it.

ibejoeb 6mo 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.

platevoltage 6mo ago

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

rho138 6mo ago

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

jaybrendansmith 6mo ago
hahahahahahahahahahaha
zombot 6mo ago
Well, if he does say so himself!

akramachamarei 6mo 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/d8301fc26d152ddfb9a09a8ac8845be5d5785ada.pdf https://cdn.sanity.io/files/pito4za5/production/d8301fc26d15...

tastyface 6mo 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?
- akramachamarei 6mo 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-in-4-scotus-cases-and-thomas-hasnt-recused https://truthout.org/articles/report-harlan-crow-has-a-stake...
  - UncleMeat 6mo ago