We hope Chief Justice John Roberts presides over a piece of birthday cake today. The nation’s head jurist turns 57.

During oral arguments in the case Maples v. Thomas, attorney John C. Neiman, Jr., sought to explain why a state’s attorney sent a notice to a defendant – as opposed to his lawyer – that his time to file a petition for relief had expired.

“At that point in time, the State case was over,” Neiman siad. “So, it was hardly clear if [the prosecutor] was going to do something that he didn’t have to do under the rules.”

“Why did he do it, then?” asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts. “Just gloating that the fellow had lost?”

That remark earned the chief justice one of the three laughs he drew during this term’s first week of oral arguments, putting him in the lead of our first weekly tally of The Funniest Justice. The ever comedic Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer were right behind him with two laughs apiece, and Justice Elena Kagan also drew chuckles from the audience once.

Here are the week 1 standings:

Chief Justice John G Roberts: 3

Justice Antonin Scalia: 2

Justice Stephen Breyer: 2

Justice Elena Kagan: 1

Justice Anthony Kennedy: 0

Justice Clarence Thomas (the silent type): 0

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 0

Justice Samuel Alito: 0

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 0

Just because his colleague Justice Stephen Breyer likes to get some of his information from “the Tweeter,” as he calls it, don’t expect Chief Justice John G. Roberts to follow suit.

Speaking recently at the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Annual Conference, Roberts said he does not “Tweet, whatever that is.”

But, he said, the proliferation of social media and other technologies has changed the U.S. Supreme Court in many ways – from the substantive legal issues they present, to rules that the justices must set for their law clerks. One of those rules: no Tweeting about the job.

“I sit down with incoming clerks at the beginning of the year,  as soon as we get back,” Roberts explained to the audience in remarks that were televised on C-SPAN, “ and go through a number of things they have to be aware of, and that’s one of them. It’s new. I tell them that they obviously shouldn’t be tweeting about what they’re doing, whether they have websites or whatever.”

Though Roberts clearly is not at ease with the lingo of the web, he said he certainly understands that seemingly harmless Internet chatter could tip off the public about opinions before they are released.

“A lot of it is inadvertent,” Roberts said. “They kind of think ‘well, I’m working really hard on this opinion this week, or getting ready for an argument.’ And you know, discerning people can look at that they are saying and try to put two and two together and figure out, maybe, what their boss is doing and all that. So even unintentionally they can sometimes reveal confidences. And, of course that’s very dangerous. So I advise them to just put all that on hold.”

But the justices must deal with social media on the job, Roberts said.

“The impact of new technology on substantive law is really quite significant,” Roberts said.  “[So] it’s going to be a great challenge … for many of us to try to keep up with the new technology. It’s one of the great things, again, with the law clerks. They come in and they know how all this stuff works and what it means. They are a resource for educating those of us that are behind the  curve.”

“This ‘suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that . . . no two . . . lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause: innumerable young people have married into it;’ and, sadly, the original parties ‘have died out of it.’ A ‘long procession of [judges] has come in and gone out’ during that time, and still the suit ‘drags its weary length before the Court.’
“Those words were not written about this case, but they could have been.”

~ Chief Justice John G. Roberts, quoting Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House” to describe the long-running legal battle between the estate of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall and the estate of pinup and reality star Anna Nicole Smith in Stern v. Marshall. (More on yesterday’s ruling here on Lawyers USA online).

Despite the disturbing facts underlying the case Camreta v. Greene, oral arguments at the Supreme Court Tuesday was a barrel of laughs, care of Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia.

(The laughs started even before oral arguments began, with Roberts’ “corny” announcement of the opinion in FCC v. AT&T Inc., as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick points out.)

When attorney Carolyn A. Kubitschek began her argument asserting that there was “no case or controversy” between the parties, Roberts jumped right in.

“Then why are you here?” asked Roberts, drawing laughter from the crowd. “Why didn’t you just go away?” More laughs.

A little later, Scalia was trying to determine just when questioning a child at school without a parent present may run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.

“You said earlier that your office had advised the county not to seize children,” Scalia said to Oregon Attorney General John R. Kroger. “Are you advising them that they don’t have the right to talk to children? [What if] they are walking along the hall in the school, right? [And they] just come up alongside: “By the way, I wanted to ask you whether your mother–” More laughter.

At one point when Justice Sonia Sotomayor was asking Kubitschek a question, Scalia leaned forward, as if advising a friend, and told Kubitschek: “She’s helping you, I think.” Laughter.

But when Scalia himself was grilling Kubitschek a little later, Roberts pointed out: “He was not trying to help you.” More laughs.

When arguments were over, Roberts and Scalia each had five more laughs in our ongoing Funniest Justice tally.

Here are the full standings after 10 weeks:

Justice Antonin Scalia: 31

Justice Stephen Breyer: 20

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.: 18

Justice Anthony Kennedy: 7

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 4

Justice Samuel Alito: 2

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 1

Justice Elena Kagan: 1

Justice Clarence Thomas: 0 (The silence since Feb. 22, 2006 continues…)

Supreme Court practitioners have many challenges – crafting complex legal arguments advocating for their clients, dealing with adverse precedent, and commanding a large body of legal research, to name a few. But once they approach the podium for oral arguments, the biggest challenge may be simply getting a word in edgewise.

That’s because the high court’s bench is hotter than ever, with the Court’s newest additions – Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – proving to be much more vocal than their predecessors, the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes reports.

“They’re way more active than they’ve ever been,” veteran Supreme Court litigator Lisa S. Blatt told the Post. “As active as Justice [David] Souter was, Justice Sotomayor is more active. And as active as Justice [John Paul] Stevens was, Justice Kagan is more active than that.”

Justice Clarence Thomas may opt out of engaging in oral arguments, but his colleagues seem to more than make up for it. Supreme Court practitioner Carter Phillips said that, according to Justice Samuel Alito, the court averaged more than 70 questions per half-hour last term. That works out to 2.3 questions per minute – a rapid-fire pace.

As a result, Chief Justice John G. Roberts is often tasked with being a traffic cop of sorts, Barnes wrote. When two justices ask a question at the same time, it is Roberts who usually gives a nod deciding who will speak, and sets up a virtual queue of who is to speak next. He also sometimes gives attorneys a break from the rapid questioning, allowing them some time to actually answer them.

Supreme Court litigator David Frederick said Roberts’ experience arguing before the Court makes him particularly adroit at that task. “The chief justice has a sense of what it’s like to be on this side of the bench,” Frederick said. “He totally understands an advocate’s perspective.”

The Supreme Court is not is session today, but somewhere a candle may burn on a birthday cake.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. turns 56 today.

The case in which Justice Elena Kagan asked her first oral argument question as a Supreme Court justice yielded the first opinion written by the Court’s newest associate justice.

Today Kagan announced the opinion she authored in the case Ransom v. FIA Card Services, in which the Court held 8-1 that a debtor in bankruptcy cannot deduct “vehicle ownership expenses” against his projected disposable income when he already owns his car fully and makes no car payments.

The case involved a bankruptcy filer who sought to deduct a total of $28,000 in car ownership costs, above the additional deduction available for car operation costs, like gas and maintenance. A creditor objected to his proffered plan.

“Today we hold that was a valid objection,” Kagan said in her statement this morning from the bench. “A person who does not have any car ownership expenses can’t take the deduction for ownership.”

The Court also held today in Mayo Foundation for Medical Ed. and Research v. U. S., that medical residents who earn stipends – as well as the hospitals they work for – must pay federal income taxes on the wages the residents receive. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., the Court gave deference to the Treasury Department’s classification of medical residents as full-time employees rather than students who work part-time, and are often exempt from such taxes.

“We defer to the agency’s determination that medical residents are workers who study, not students who work,” Roberts said in announcing the ruling in Court this morning.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. opened the Supreme Court session a little before 10 a.m. today so that oral arguments in the first case could conclude in time for the Court to join a national moment of silence for the victims of Saturday’s attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ life which killed six people, including District Court Judge John Roll.

At the beginning of the session, Roberts invited the members of the audience to join the Court’s 11 a.m. observance “to honor the innocent victims.”

The moment of silence was marked at the Court at the same time President Barack Obama led a national silent observance at the White House and lawmakers likewise commemorated at the Capitol.

“I speak for the members of this Court in extending our condolences to the families of the victims,” Roberts said.

The new 112^th Congress kicks off its session today, and lawmakers – including new House Speaker John Boehner – will be sworn in. But it was Boehner’s staffers who got a Supreme treat yesterday.

All federal employees must take a constitutional oath. But yesterday Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. administered that oath to members of Boehner’s congressional staff during a closed-door ceremony in the congressman’s office.

The move was unusual – most staffers simply sign an oath without any pomp or circumstance, reports The New York Times‘ The Caucus blog. But the move isn’t unprecedented.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told the Times that Roberts has presided over a number of oath ceremonies, including those for the architect of the Capitol, board members at the Legal Services Corporation and the new ambassador to Australia.

Roberts has lot of experience administering oaths – remember that he did it twice for President Barack Obama.