One of the issues the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court had to grapple with Wednesday during oral arguments in the Stolen Valor Act case U.S. v. Alvarez was whether the act of lying harms someone.

The justices considered lying in various contexts outside the one at issue in the case, which involved a man who repeatedly said he was a decorated war veteran when he wasn’t.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor considered the harm that might be inflicted by another type of fib.

When someone claims to have “an honor they didn’t receive, … outside of the emotional reaction, where’s the harm?” Sotomayor began.  “And I’m not minimizing it. I too take offense when people make these kinds of claims, but I take offense when someone I’m dating makes a claim that’s not true.”

The comment drew laughter from the crowd. Later in the argument, the justice returned to the theme.

“On a date,” the justice said, a lie could “induce a young woman to date someone who she thinks is more of a professional,” and that could also “harm the parents [and] the family.”

I seems that a Supreme Court justice is always on duty, even when she is just trying to have a simple cup of coffee with a friend on her day off.

Such was the case when Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited Sesame Street recently and found herself presiding over the case of Bear v. Goldilocks. Good thing Sotomayor always has her judicial robe handy.

Sotomayor rendered a speedy resolution of the case – even if she totally disregarded the fact that the crime of breaking and entering had occured – and all parties were satisfied.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s winter recess has given Justice Sonia Sotomayor the opportunity to tour some of the country’s island territories.

Fresh from a trip to Guam, which caused her to miss the president’s State of the Union address last week, Sotomayor landed in Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands over the weekend. Sotomayor is attending legal conferences sponsored by the Guam Bar Association and the Northern Mariana Islands Bar Association.

According to the Saipan Tribune, Sotomayor, whose family hails from Puerto Rico, said she felt a connection to the island communities.

“There’s still peace here,” she said yesterday at a press briefing  at the courthouse of the U.S. District Court for the NMI . “It is wonderful to see islands unlike the ones I am accustomed to, even my own island, Puerto Rico, that are very, very developed and don’t maintain completely their island identity, but that’s not true here.”

During her trip, Sotomayor met with bar association and judicial officials and helped judge a mock trial competition.

She may not pull in a lot of laughs during oral arguments, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is laughing all the way to the bank as the Court’s wealthiest Supreme Court justice by a long shot, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

With a net worth somewhere between $10.7 million and a whopping $45.5 million, Ginsburg easily tops the list of wealthiest justices, according to the center, which crunched the justices’ financial disclosure data from 2009 (the report based on the latest 2010 filings will be unveiled in the fall). Ginsburg’s holdings include a $6 million retirement nest egg.

Justice Stephen Breyer’s second-place finish is attributable mainly to an array of investments (some of which spur him to recuse himself in cases involving the companies he invests in). His wealth is estimated to be between $4.6 million and $16.2 million.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan are also millionaires, according to the analysis, though none come close to Ginsburg or even Breyer.

And while Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas can each claim a net worth well in the six-digit range, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cannot. In fact, she could be the only justice in the red. Her net worth is somewhere between $95,000 in debt to $50,000, according to the report.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who turned 57 Saturday, opened up about her experience living with Type 1 diabetes since childhood last week.

Speaking to dozens of children at an event hosted by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Children’s Congress, Sotomayor said she has learned to live with the disease, which causes the pancreas to stop producing insulin.

“It’s a disease you have to deal with, but you can,” Sotomayor told the children according to the Associated Press. The Supreme Court associate justice’s condition has long been known, but last week marked the first time she discussed it so openly.

Sotomayor talked about her experiences – from being diagnosed at age 7, to learning just the right amount of insulin she needed for whatever foods she ate, to dealing with insulin injections and ultimately the use of an insulin pump. One thing that living with the disease taught her, she said, is the discipline that in turn helped her excel as a student.

“Figuring out how I felt all the time,” she said. “All of that taught me discipline.”

“They only want one thing from a nominee: that is a direct answer on the case that’s important to them….They were not interested in my answers. The answers weren’t important to them. Their questions were important.”

~ Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking to an audience at her alma mater, Princeton University, about her Senate confirmation hearings.

Amid the swelling controversy over whether justices of the Supreme Court should recuse themselves from cases where there is an appearance of family, social or political ties to parties, one justice turned to her trial lawyer skills to avoid a question on the issue.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in Philadelphia to accept an award from the local bar association, was asked by Fox Rothschild co-chairman Abraham Reich whether justices of the nation’s highest court would be bound by the same ethical mandates as other federal judges.

“In a high profile case, the failure to recuse could have a significant impact,” Reich told the ABA Journal. “I asked her whether or not there would be a change” to make justices subject to the same code of ethics.

“I don’t know,” Sotomoyor replied, according to the Legal Intelligencer. She added: “I used to teach my potential witnesses just to answer the questions asked.”

During her Supreme Court confirmation process, Senate lawmakers asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor questions so personal and probing in nature that she later told to a friend: “I think they already know the color of my underwear.”

Speaking Monday at Northwestern University School of Law, Sotomayor said she thought some questions regarding her personal dating life posed during meetings with senators revealed gender bias.

“There were private questions I was offended by. I was convinced they were not asking those questions of the male applicants,” Sotomayor said, according to The Atlantic‘s James Warren. “I wondered if they ever asked those questions of the male candidates. But the society has a double standard.”

Sotomayor, who is divorced, said dating is tougher for female federal judges than for their male counterparts. There are “many single male colleagues who are judges who date often, bring dates to court affairs and nobody ever talks about them,” Sotomayor told the audience. “I knew if I did the same thing, my morals would be questioned. So I’m very careful about whom I date and how public it is. …I don’t like people talking about my private life.”

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.”

“Counsel, I don’t believe I had a trial in my district court days where, between the time I had the pretrial conference and the time trial started, there wasn’t a slew of motions, because that’s about the time counsel tends to wake up.”

That comment came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor during oral arguments Tuesday in the Speedy Trial Act case U.S. v. Tinklenberg. The quip earned her a laugh, and placed her officially on the board of our Funniest Justice tally.

Here are the standings after nine weeks:

Justice Antonin Scalia: 26

Justice Stephen Breyer: 19

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.: 13

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 (Thomas has been silent during oral arguments since Feb. 22, 2006)