Prof. Laura E. Little (Temple Law School) and Samantha Sharenow (Temple Law School)
The U.S. Supreme Court term spanning from October 2023 to June 2024 was bloated with showdowns and blockbuster cases. Topics covered included former President Trump’s attempts to reverse his election loss, fights against government corruption, gun rights, abortion, the core of federal regulatory power, and—of course—ethics scandals concerning two of the most conservative justices. Whether a U.S. citizen or not, many folks were horrified by the Court’s decisions on these issues—all of which were deemed to benefit far right positions. Nothing was done about the ethics violations of Justices Alito and Thomas. Perhaps for all those reasons, the comedy that emerged among members of the public—in such forms as memes and cartoons –showed no hilarity. The public did not generate mirthful humor, but instead gravitated toward cutting satire with an obvious serious undercurrent. As is often the case with comedy, the most interesting bits came from real life itself. In the case of the justices and litigants in the Supreme Court, “real life” included extemporaneous interchanges during oral arguments and clever snark appearing in the varying justices’ opinions.
Here are a few examples:
Trump v. United States
Cited often as the most consequential case of the term, Trump v. United States held that the President of the United States is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct within his conclusive constitutional authority, presumptive immunity for all other “official acts,” and no immunity for “unofficial acts.” Although the Court offered little guidance on the distinction between official and unofficial, the case did guarantee that Trump would not have to face further criminal prosecution before the November election. The Court’s majority opinion contains no witty turns of phrase. Nor did the dissents, which howled with protest that the opinion granted Trump and future presidents a blank check to break the law. The dissents followed a strategy of illustrating the hyperbolically absurd consequences of the majority’s extension of immunity to the President. Consider the line from Justice Brown Jackson’s dissent:
While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General [from office], for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death.
Published cartoons and memes from the public carried a very similar message:
syracuse.com
Snyder v. United States
A lesser-known opinion, with potentially great implications for the conduct of government officials, Snyder v. United States significantly raised the bar for prosecutors pursuing corrupt officials for taking payments in exchange for providing benefits to private individuals or companies. Drawing on a distinction between payments meant to influence a public official to take a particular action (bribes) and payments made as an after-the-fact reward (gratuities), Snyder held that an important criminal corruption statute did nothing to punish official receipt of an after-the fact payment of $13,000 in exchange for awarding a lucrative government contract to an entity.
As illustrated by this cartoon, Snyder’s holding was particularly ironic given breaking news stories about previously undisclosed large gifts made by wealthy conservatives to conservative Supreme Court justices:
The oral argument in the case contained a curious, yet hardly side-splittingly funny, interchange between the defendant’s attorney and Justice Sotomayor:
Justice Sotomayor: The nexus requirement says the gratuity must be “in connection with any business transaction or series of transactions of a covered entity involving anything of value of 5,000 or more.”
Attorney Lisa S. Blatt: Right.
Justice Sotomayor: The trash collectors, not having anything to do with 5,000 or the contract itself.
Attorney Lisa S. Blatt: The doctor who removes your wart, fine. But the doctor who takes your gallbladder out or does your face, like my plastic surgeon, no, that’s worth over 5,000. (Laughter in the courtroom)
Garland v. Cargill
Cargill concerned a recent rule promulgated by the U.S. federal agency regulating firearms, a rule that classified bump stocks as “machine guns.” When attached to a semiautomatic rifle, bump stocks allow the rifle to fire at a rate approximating that of machine gun—thereby dramatically enhancing the degree of harm possible in a short period of time. The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the rule, holding that a bump stock does not allow a semiautomatic rifle to be fired “by a single function of a trigger” or cause the semiautomatic rifle to fire automatically.
In dissent, Justice Sotomayor satirized the majority’s tortured, hair-splitting reasoning used to get to its decision, stating that the holding required “six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text” governing rapid-fire weapons.
The popular press admired Justice Sotomayor’s more intuitive approach:
Moyle v. United States
As with other cases touching on abortion, Moyle turned on a technical area of substantive law and procedure. The bottom line of the decision, however, is that a state law allowing abortions only when necessary to prevent death, with no exceptions for grave health risks to the pregnant woman, cannot be enforced—at least temporarily.
This tweet reflected a common tone in the public’s reaction:
Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo
The final case we discuss promises enormous reduction in the scope of governance, with the threat of reducing expertly framed, effective regulation. Loper overruled an earlier decision—Chevron—which counseled that courts should defer to the expertise of regulatory agencies that inform the rules the agencies promulgate.
Although many in the public may not have appreciated the meaning and probable consequences of Loper, many of those who understood those consequences were aghast, particularly with the ease with which the current majority of the Supreme Court was willing to overrule long-standing precedent. (Do we want this paragraph to be present or past tense?)
Consider this tweet, which went viral:
The bottom line of Loper assumed that courts were perfectly suited to substitute their own brainpower for the expertise of specialized administrative agencies. Apropos of this hubris, a particularly notable irony later came to light. Indeed, those who snickered at Loper’ssuggestion that courts were equipped to conquer the technological knowledge necessary to invalidate administrative rules found sweet revenge in another decision of the Court. In Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, the first version of the Court’s official opinion referred repeatedly to nitrous oxide (laughing gas) rather than nitrogen dioxide (an air pollutant). Needless to say, the dispute was about nitrogen dioxide:
Finally is a more general, but emblematic, reaction to what the decision stood for—a cartoon depicting the author of Loper (Chief Justice Roberts) preparing to destroy Lady Liberty, who was forced to remove her blindfold (ensuring impartial decision-making) and to abandon her sword and scales of justice:
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What should we call these cartoons, memes, and quips? Grasping at Gags? Attempts at laughter amid adversity? Collapse combined with comedy? Raucous resignation to reality?
We’ll let you decide. But one thing is clear: the tenor of this year’s humor regarding Supreme Court shenanigans is far more bitter and arguably far less hilarious than recent years.