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Who was the funniest Supreme Court justice?

The funniest Supreme Court justice was Antonin Scalia, according to PolitiFact's check of the Court's laugh counts (2016), because he treated oral argument like a live room, puncturing lawyers' answers with short, plain-spoken questions that drew more laughter than any colleague.

Updated · Based on PolitiFact (February 17, 2016), SCOTUSblog (September 24, 2025) and ABA Journal (March 12, 2019)

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The ranking here is literal: researchers count every "[laughter]" the court reporter types into argument transcripts and credit it to whoever spoke last. Boston University law professor Jay Wexler started it in The Green Bag in December 2005 and found Scalia far ahead, with Stephen Breyer second. Litigation consultant Ryan Malphurs, and later law professors Tonja Jacobi and Matthew Sag across arguments from 1955 to 2017, reached the same result. On the current bench, a 2025 SCOTUSblog tally puts Neil Gorsuch first, ahead of Elena Kagan and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The pick: Antonin Scalia

Associate justice, 1986–2016

Finished first in every term PolitiFact reviewed from October 2004, with roughly 40 percent of all laughs over six terms.

Also in the running

  • Stephen Breyer (Associate justice, 1994–2022): Second to Scalia in Wexler's 2004–05 count (45 laughs to 77), and briefly first in the 2005–06 term, 28 laughs to 25, in The New York Times' follow-up tally.
  • Neil Gorsuch (Associate justice since 2017): Led SCOTUSblog's count for the 2022–23 through 2024–25 terms with 135 of 503 laughs, and 225 laughs since the 2017–18 term.
  • Elena Kagan (Associate justice since 2010): Second on SCOTUSblog's recent tally with 93 laughs; Jacobi and Sag rank her fifth by laughs per argument across their 62-year sample.
  • John Roberts (Chief justice since 2005): Third on the Jacobi and Sag average and third on SCOTUSblog's recent tally with 89; SCOTUSblog found he leads the justices in laughs from slips of the tongue and interruptions.

What made them funny

Scalia's laughs came from bluntness at speed. Malphurs sorted all 60 of his laugh lines from the 2006–07 term: 20 went at a lawyer's argument, 10 at the lawyer, 11 at fellow justices, 10 at institutions and 9 at himself. Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan told The New York Times he "plays to the crowd," and Wexler called him a brash questioner. The jokes were almost never set pieces. They were questions, asked in the plainest words available, that made a complicated answer sound silly.

Breyer was the counterweight. Jacobi and Sag call him "the most whimsical justice" they read, and Malphurs found he joked at his own expense more often, proportionally, than Scalia. Their running back-and-forth became a fixture: Malphurs wrote that the two sparred regularly, and Scalia teased Breyer more than any other justice. The pattern on today's bench is narrower. SCOTUSblog found that 75 percent of Gorsuch's laughs and 82 percent of Brett Kavanaugh's come from gentle mockery of the lawyers at the lectern.

Techniques to take into your videos and sets

  1. 1. Plead ignorance of the jargon

    What they did

    During one argument in the 2006–07 term, Scalia asked, "What's a footman? I don't even know what a footman is," as Wexler recorded in the Yale Law Journal. A justice of the highest court in the country admitted he didn't know one word, and the room laughed at the word instead of at him.

    Why it works

    Everyone in the room is pretending to understand the specialist word. The person with the most status saying out loud that they don't gives the audience permission to admit it too, and it quietly makes the jargon look ridiculous.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    The flat-pack instructions say to "seat the cam lock." I don't know where a cam lock would sit, and I'm not sure it does either.

    Try it

    Find the one technical word in your story that everybody nods along to, and ask, deadpan, what it actually means.

  2. 2. The flat reintroduction

    What they did

    During the 2000 Bush v. Gore argument, Florida lawyer Joseph Klock kept calling justices by the wrong names. When Scalia's turn came, he opened his question with "I'm Scalia," SCOTUSblog's Mark Walsh recounts. Klock answered, "I will remember that." In a different argument, the Times reported, Justice David Souter thanked a lawyer who mistook him for Scalia, then told him to apologize to Scalia.

    Why it works

    Correcting a mistake with anger makes you the problem. Correcting it with a calm, formal introduction, as if meeting for the first time, makes the repeated error the joke, and leaves the other person nothing to argue with.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    The courier has left my parcel at 14B for the third Tuesday running, so I taped a note to my door: "Hello. I'm 14A. We've met."

    Try it

    When something gets you wrong more than twice, answer it with a polite, one-line introduction of yourself and nothing more.

  3. 3. Keep a recurring sparring partner

    What they did

    Malphurs found that Scalia aimed more of his teasing at Breyer than at anyone else, and that the pair sparred regularly in open court, sometimes with real tension underneath. A 2011 courtroom report from the Daily Record described the duo as giving new meaning to the phrase "oral argument."

    Why it works

    A running rival gives an audience a story across episodes. Each new exchange gets a laugh from the line itself plus a second one from the history, and viewers start waiting for the next round.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    Day 41 of my feud with the self-checkout. Today it announced an unexpected item in the bagging area, and the item was my own elbow.

    Try it

    Pick one object, app or appliance that wrongs you, give the fight a day count, and post a new round every time it happens.

  4. 4. Drop one smelly noun

    What they did

    Breyer's hypotheticals were famously long, but Wexler noticed that one of his laughs in the 2006–07 term came from two words alone: "Limburger cheese." Dropped into a dry legal question, a single vivid, slightly disgusting object did more than a punchline could.

    Why it works

    A concrete noun the audience can smell or see lands faster than any clever phrasing, and putting it in a serious setting makes the contrast do the work.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    My roommate's 2 a.m. snack was a tin of sardines, eaten standing at the open fridge, lit like a crime scene.

    Try it

    Go through your setup and swap one general word (food, mess, smell) for the single most specific object you can name.

Before you quote them

Every count here relies on the court reporter's "[laughter]" notation, which cannot tell a belly laugh from a nervous chuckle; Wexler said so himself. Justices were only named in transcripts from October 2004, so earlier wit can't be compared. Justice Samuel Alito, quoted by SCOTUSblog, has noted that some people have nothing better to do than count Supreme Court laughs. In the "I'm Scalia" exchange, the transcript also credits Klock with a second reply that Walsh suspects came from Justice Anthony Kennedy, so it is left out here.

Questions people ask

Who was the funniest Supreme Court justice?
Antonin Scalia. PolitiFact's 2016 check of the laugh counts found he drew 352 of 919 laughs, about 40 percent, across six terms from 2004, and finished first every term. Jay Wexler's 2005 study, Ryan Malphurs's 2011 paper and Jacobi and Sag's 2019 analysis all put him on top.
Who is the funniest justice on the Supreme Court now?
Neil Gorsuch, by the numbers. SCOTUSblog's September 2025 count credits him with 135 of 503 laughs from the 2022–23 to 2024–25 terms, ahead of Elena Kagan with 93 and Chief Justice John Roberts with 89. Ketanji Brown Jackson drew 7.
How do people count laughs at the Supreme Court?
They search oral argument transcripts for the court reporter's "[laughter]" notation and credit the justice who spoke just before it. Transcripts have named individual justices only since October 2004. Jacobi and Sag counted more than 9,000 such moments in 6,864 arguments between 1955 and 2017.
Was Justice Breyer funny?
Yes, consistently second. Wexler counted 45 Breyer laughs to Scalia's 77 in the 2004–05 term, and The New York Times found Breyer ahead, 28 to 25, early in 2005–06. Jacobi and Sag called him the most whimsical justice, noted for jokes at his own expense.
Did Scalia really say "I'm Scalia" in Bush v. Gore?
Yes. In the 2000 argument, Florida lawyer Joseph Klock had misidentified several justices, so Scalia began his question with "I'm Scalia," and Klock replied, "I will remember that," as SCOTUSblog's Mark Walsh recounted in February 2016.

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Sources

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