6. Scalia is just as funny as you’ve heard. (See this letter to the editor of the Boston Herald after a reporter misinterpreted his Sicilian chin-scratching in Mass as an obscene gesture.) But Chief Justice Roberts is staging a coup to replace him as the justice who gets the most laughs. Scalia wins this round for quantity, but a Roberts’ quip gets the hardest laughs, at the expense of one of the arguing lawyers. I don’t know if it’s considered a compliment or a good sign to one side if they provide fodder that gets a humorous diss from a justice.

“Supreme amusement,” by Greg Piper, The Smoking Room, March 31, 2006