Bloomberg’s Kimberly Robinson has compiled a list of the 10 funniest exchanges during oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court this year.
The brief survey ranked Chief Justice John Roberts as the funniest member of the bench, a title formerly (and indisputably) possessed by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. A 2013 survey of rhetoric at the Supreme Court, which included a study of laughter during oral argument, found Scalia alone solicited 40 percent of all jocular reactions during the 2011-2012 term. Conservative justices accounted for 207 of the 343 instances of humor that term, while liberal justices compiled 136 laughs.
The funniest moment of the last term, according to Robinson, came when the courtroom lights went out during arguments in Nichols v. U.S., while Justice Elena Kagan was putting a question to advocate Assistant to the Solicitor General Curtis E. Gannon.
“I knew we should have paid that bill,” Roberts quipped.
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