ABSTRACT
Every year, the Supreme Court issues between one and two hundred written opinions. The more than five hundred volumes of Supreme Court Reports occupy over one hundred feet of shelf space in a library. This body of work can be regarded as a corpus, analyzed for style, argument, use of rhetorical strategies. One can distinguish scathing words according to their audience, their target, and their intent and effect, as well as their character or genre. A scornful or satiric speaker can have high or low prestige. When he wrote his famous satires of French society, Voltaire was a respected writer whose prestige and power were only somewhat lower than those of the wealthy whose vices he mocked. Courts use humor and satire, often quite legitimately. Humor can brighten an otherwise dry and technical opinion, relieving a discussion that without it would be dull and lifeless. It can also have an educative function.
