Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Courtroom Giggles

The Volokh Conspiracy is putting together a list of the funniest passages in Supreme Court opinions (check the comments). My personal favorites:
If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf-and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point-then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government's power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States," U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a "fundamental" aspect of golf.

Either out of humility or out of self-respect (one or the other) the Court should decline to answer this incredibly difficult and incredibly silly question." [Antonin Scalia, Dissenting, PGA Tour v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 (2001)]

"As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District...Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him." [Scalia, Concurring, Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993)]

And Scalia again, "There is really no way in which Justice Breyer can travel with the happy band that reaches today's result unless he says yes to Apprendi. Concisely put, Justice Breyer is on the wrong flight; he should either get off before the doors close, or buy a ticket to Apprendi-land." [Scalia, Concurring, Ring v. Arizona,536 U.S. 584, 613 (2002)]

And while not from the Supreme Court, How Appealing does link to the recent 7th Circuit decision in USA v. Murphy, whose first footnote reads:
The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch "hoe." A "hoe," of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden's response. We have taken the liberty of changing "hoe" to "ho," a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps "You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies."

Anybody wonder why I love doing this?

UPDATE: Prawfsblawg joins in the fun, and it isn't limiting itself to the Supreme Court.

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