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Floyd's joke and the ensuing silence

During oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, a major abortion rights case, Texas Assistant Attorney General Jay Floyd began his remarks with a reference to his opposing counsel, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee: "Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word." The joke was met with silence in the courtroom and, according to abortion rights lawyer Margie Pitts Hames, visible resentment from Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Widely viewed as sexist and often considered "the worst joke in legal history", Floyd's attempt at humor has been cited by commentators including Justice Antonin Scalia as a cautionary tale about attempting humor in court.

Floyd did not recover from the faux pas and struggled in the rest of his remarks, twice being laughed at by the audience. Justice Harry Blackmun cited poor arguments by both Floyd and Weddington among his reasons for supporting an order to reargue the case the following term. On reargument, Floyd was replaced by his supervisor Robert C. Flowers. The court ultimately ruled in favor of plaintiff Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey), a landmark decision that established a right to an abortion; Roe was overturned in 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Oral arguments

Roe v. Wade arose from the attempt of a pseudonymous "Jane Roe" (Norma McCorvey) to obtain an abortion in the U.S. state of Texas. Abortions were illegal in Texas in most cases, leading to a legal battle through the federal courts, nominally against Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari after the Northern District of Texas ruled in McCorvey's favor, and heard oral arguments on December 13, 1971.^[1]

McCorvey was represented by two women, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington was 26 years old when she argued before the Supreme Court in Roe.^[2] She had been one of five women in her graduating class of 250 at University of Texas Law School two years prior.^[3] Only seven women had spoken before the court in the preceding twelve months; there was no women's restroom in the lawyers' lounge.^[4] According to court artist Betty Wells and Justice Harry Blackmun, Weddington looked attractive.^[5] Coffee sat beside her at the table for petitioners' counsel. A number of abortion rights advocates sat in the audience.^[4] As counselor for the petitioner, Weddington spoke first. She spoke with an argument style that Mairi N. Morrison in the UCLA Women's Law Journal described as "classically female and extraordinary effective".^[6] She reserved a few minutes of her time for rebuttal, meaning that she would speak briefly after Jay Floyd, the Texas assistant attorney general who represented Wade.^[7]

After being introduced by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Floyd began,

Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.

About three seconds of total silence ensued.^[8] Margie Pitts Hames, another abortion rights lawyer who was present, later said: "I thought Burger was going to come right off the bench at him. He glared him down. He got the point right away that this was not appropriate in that court."^[9] May It Please the Court, a narrated selection of Supreme Court oral arguments, describes Burger as "annoyed" and the resulting silence as "embarrassed".^[10]

Floyd was audibly flustered and struggled to recover from the initial blunder.^[11] He faltered in the rest of his remarks, sometimes contradicting himself or speaking based on personal opinion.^[12] At two junctures, the audience laughed at his expense, which he appeared to take exception to.^[13] However, Justice Harry Blackmun, who privately ranked all lawyers' arguments using letter grades,^[14] gave Floyd a B to Weddington's C+.^[4] Weddington later said that she thought the incident "unnerved [Floyd] somewhat".^[15]

Analysis

Weddington felt that Floyd "had argued too many cases in rural Texas, where a little humor would have been received better".^[16] Hames called it "very chauvinistic".^[9] Justice Antonin Scalia (who was not on the court at the time) and scholar Bryan A. Garner attributed the faux pas to "what [Floyd] probably considered courtly Southern humor".^[17]

The joke is widely considered to have been sexist and disrespectful.^[18] Rachel L. DiCioccio and Laura E. Little in Temple Law Review see it as a "throwback to an earlier era (pre-1960s)" and write that Floyd, in attempting to use identification humor (connecting with the all-male panel of justices), instead engaged in the more divisive practice of differentiation humor (mocking Weddington and Coffee for being different from the men).^[19] Ruth Colker in the Harvard Women's Law Journal argues that the joke betrayed "[t]he lack of respect for women embedded in Texas's position". From this she concludes that abortion rights activists were right to pursue constitutional litigation, because "real dialogue is not possible when a base of respect does not exist".^[20] From a semantic perspective, scholar Serge V. Gavenko writes, while the comment was at face value positive, it violated Grice's maxims with respect to relevance and that it was incongruous given the importance of the proceedings.^[21]

Legacy

After six months of internal deliberations, the court ordered for the case to be reargued. Justice Blackmun supported the order in part because of his dissatisfaction with both Floyd and Weddington's oral arguments.^[22] On reargument, Texas instead sent Floyd's supervisor, Robert C. Flowers.^[23] The case was subsequently decided in favor of McCorvey, establishing a constitutional right to abortion, which persisted until the decision was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022.^[1]

Floyd's joke has become a textbook example of inappropriate use of humor in legal settings:^[16] Scalia and Garner, in their book Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, cite the mishap to illustrate why litigators should not tell prepared jokes, which "almost invariably bomb".^[17] The flubbed joke is used for comic relief in Robert Schenkkan's play All the Way^[24] and in the introduction to episodes of the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny.^[25] Jerry Goldman, the founder of the Oyez Project, has called it "[t]he most compelling example of silence pregnant with meaning".^[26] In 2013, Geoffrey Sant in Salon described it as the "Worst Joke in Legal History", claiming the title over seven other contenders including Don West's knock-knock joke during the trial of George Zimmerman.^[27] This characterization has since been repeated in a New York Times obituary of Weddington^[28] and by The Independent,^[29] SCOTUSblog,^[30] The Washington Post,^[31] and the National Constitution Center.^[1]

References

Citations

^ ^a ^b ^c NCC 2023.
^ Prager 2021, p. 90.
^ Hanauer 1989.
^ ^a ^b ^c Prager 2021, p. 91.
^ Prager 2021, pp. 90–91. "So as to better recall the argument of every lawyer come before him, the justice jotted a quick physical description of him or her. As Weddington began now to speak ... [w]rote Blackmun: 'large blond hair, rather pretty, plump.'"
^ Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41.
^ Christopher 2019, p. 318 n. 72.
^ Roe argument 1971, 34:12. Sant 2013. Christopher 2019, p. 318.
^ ^a ^b Garrow 1994.
^ Irons & Guitton 1993, pp. 346–347. Cited in Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41, and Gavenko 2001, p. 984.
^ Epstein & Kobylka 1992, p. 180. Malphurs 2010, p. 48.
^ Epstein & Kobylka 1992, pp. 180–181. Christopher 2019, pp. 318–319
^
Christopher 2019, pp. 318–319.
- "He argued that the Does did not have standing because they were not pregnant, but then incongruously asserted that Roe lost her standing when she became pregnant, saying, 'I think she makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant.' Justice [Byron] White retorted, 'Maybe she makes her choice when she lives in Texas,' and the courtroom erupted in laughter. As the laughter peaked, Floyd, sounding affronted (though he may have been affecting it), asked, 'May I proceed?'" (pp. 318–319, emphases original; see Roe argument 1971, 41:38).
- "In addition to his assertion that neither pregnant nor non-pregnant women had standing, he alternately argued that life begins at conception, but he did not know when life began for the purposes of the abortion statute, saying, 'Mr. Justice, there are unanswerable questions in this field'—again, to audible chuckling in the gallery" (p. 319; see Roe argument 1971, 56:21).
^ Owens 2023.
^ Friedell 2022. Weddington 1992.
^ ^a ^b Christopher 2019, p. 318.
^ ^a ^b Scalia & Garner 2008.
^ Colker 1990, pp. 163–164. Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41. Goldman 2003, p. 9. DiCioccio & Little 2020, pp. 20–21. Bryant 2024.
^ DiCioccio & Little 2020, pp. 20–21. See p. 5 for definitions of terms.
^ Colker 1990, pp. 163–164.
^ Gavenko 2001, p. 984.
^ Epstein & Kobylka 1992, pp. 185–186.
^ Christopher 2019, p. 324.
^ Bryant 2024.
^ Hayes 2022.
^ Goldman 2003, p. 9.
^ Sant 2013.
^ Seelye 2021.
^ Sommerlad 2018.
^ Runkle 2017.
^ Strauss 2022.

Sources

Scholarly and literary

Bryant, Tom (2024). "Why Adapt History to the Stage?". The Dramaturgy of History. Milton Park, England & New York City: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003429401-2. ISBN 9781003855507.
Christopher, Catherine Martin (2019). "Nevertheless She Persisted: Comparing Roe v. Wade's Two Oral Arguments". Seton Hall Law Review. 49: 307–352. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Colker, Ruth (1990). "Feminist Litigation: An Oxymoron—A Study of the Briefs Filed in William L. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services". Harvard Women's Law Journal. 13: 137–188. Retrieved March 17, 2024 – via HeinOnline.
DiCioccio, Rachel L.; Little, Lauren E. (2020). "Comedy Collides with the Courtroom" (PDF). Temple Law Review. 92: 1–24. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
Epstein, Lee; Kobylka, Joseph Fiske (1992). The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807820512. OL 1744620M.
Friedell, Deborah (June 23, 2022). "A Piece of Pizza and a Beer". London Review of Books. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Garrow, David J. (1994). Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade. New York City: Macmillan. pp. 525–526. ISBN 9780025427556.
Gavenko, Serge V. (2001). "Analysis of the Argumentative Effect of Evaluative Semantics in Natural Language". Computational Science—ICCS 2001 (Conference paper). 2073: 979–988. doi:10.1007/3-540-45545-0_110.
Goldman, Jerry (October 2003). "To undeaf their ears: the spoken word in a multimedia world" (PDF). IEEE MultiMedia. 10 (4): 8–11. doi:10.1109/MMUL.2003.1237545. Retrieved March 18, 2024 – via ResearchGate.
Irons, Peter H.; Guitton, Stpehanie (1993). May It Please the Court: The Most Significant Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court Since 1955. New York City: The New Press. ISBN 9781565840362. OL 1743484M.
Malphurs, Ryan A. (2010). "'People Did Sometimes Stick Things in My Underwear': The Function of Laughter at the U.S. Supreme Court". Communication Law Review. 10 (2): 48–75. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Morrison, Mairi N. (1995). "May It Please Whose Court: How Moot Court Perpetuates Gender Bias in the Real World of Practice". UCLA Women's Law Journal. 6 (1): 49–84. doi:10.5070/L361017641.
Owens, Ryan J. (November 2023). "Order effects and oral argument at the US Supreme Court". Social Science Quarterly. 104 (6): 1222–1236. doi:10.1111/ssqu.13310.
Prager, Joshua (2021). The Family Roe: An American Story. New York City: W.W. Norton. ISBN 9781324036074.
Scalia, Antonin; Garner, Bryan A. (2008). Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. St. Paul, Minn., U.S.: Thomson/West. pp. 186–187. ISBN 9780314184719. OL 21172969M.

News media

Hanauer, Joan (May 10, 1989). "'Roe vs. Wade': How it all happened". United Press International. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Runkle, Molly (January 19, 2017). "Roe: Telling the stories behind the landmark decision". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Seelye, Katharine Q. (December 27, 2021). "Sarah Weddington, Who Successfully Argued Roe v. Wade, Dies at 76". The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Sommerlad, Joe (September 4, 2018). "Roe v. Wade: What is the landmark US abortion ruling and will Brett Kavanaugh's tenure jeopardise it?". The Independent. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Strauss, Valerie (June 24, 2022). "A brief lesson on Roe v. Wade". The Washington Post (Analysis). Retrieved March 16, 2024.

Other

Hayes, Chris (January 19, 2022). "#WITHpod & Strict Scrutiny crossover". Why Is This Happening? (Podcast with transcript). MSNBC. Event occurs at 56:42. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
"On this day, the Roe v. Wade decision". National Constitution Center. January 22, 2023. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
"Roe v. Wade" (Argument audio and transcript). Oyez Project. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Sant, Geoffrey (July 26, 2013). "8 horrible courtroom jokes and their ensuing legal calamities". Salon. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Weddington, Sarah Ragle (1992). A Question of Choice. New York City: Putnam's. p. 119. ISBN 0399137904. OL 35663441M.

[FOOTNOTENCC2023-1] NCC 2023.

[FOOTNOTEPrager202190-2] Prager 2021, p. 90.

[FOOTNOTEHanauer1989-3] Hanauer 1989.

[FOOTNOTEPrager202191-4] Prager 2021, p. 91.

[5] Prager 2021, pp. 90–91. "So as to better recall the argument of every lawyer come before him, the justice jotted a quick physical description of him or her. As Weddington began now to speak ... [w]rote Blackmun: 'large blond hair, rather pretty, plump.'"

[FOOTNOTEMorrison1995p.&nbsp;61_n.&nbsp;41-6] Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41.

[FOOTNOTEChristopher2019p.&nbsp;318_n.&nbsp;72-7] Christopher 2019, p. 318 n. 72.

[8] Roe argument 1971, 34:12. Sant 2013. Christopher 2019, p. 318.

[FOOTNOTEGarrow1994-9] Garrow 1994.

[10] Irons & Guitton 1993, pp. 346–347. Cited in Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41, and Gavenko 2001, p. 984.

[11] Epstein & Kobylka 1992, p. 180. Malphurs 2010, p. 48.

[12] Epstein & Kobylka 1992, pp. 180–181. Christopher 2019, pp. 318–319

[13] Christopher 2019, pp. 318–319.
"He argued that the Does did not have standing because they were not pregnant, but then incongruously asserted that Roe lost her standing when she became pregnant, saying, 'I think she makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant.' Justice [Byron] White retorted, 'Maybe she makes her choice when she lives in Texas,' and the courtroom erupted in laughter. As the laughter peaked, Floyd, sounding affronted (though he may have been affecting it), asked, 'May I proceed?'" (pp. 318–319, emphases original; see Roe argument 1971, 41:38).

"In addition to his assertion that neither pregnant nor non-pregnant women had standing, he alternately argued that life begins at conception, but he did not know when life began for the purposes of the abortion statute, saying, 'Mr. Justice, there are unanswerable questions in this field'—again, to audible chuckling in the gallery" (p. 319; see Roe argument 1971, 56:21).

[14] "He argued that the Does did not have standing because they were not pregnant, but then incongruously asserted that Roe lost her standing when she became pregnant, saying, 'I think she makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant.' Justice [Byron] White retorted, 'Maybe she makes her choice when she lives in Texas,' and the courtroom erupted in laughter. As the laughter peaked, Floyd, sounding affronted (though he may have been affecting it), asked, 'May I proceed?'" (pp. 318–319, emphases original; see Roe argument 1971, 41:38).

[15] "In addition to his assertion that neither pregnant nor non-pregnant women had standing, he alternately argued that life begins at conception, but he did not know when life began for the purposes of the abortion statute, saying, 'Mr. Justice, there are unanswerable questions in this field'—again, to audible chuckling in the gallery" (p. 319; see Roe argument 1971, 56:21).

[FOOTNOTEOwens2023-14] Owens 2023.

[15] Friedell 2022. Weddington 1992.

[FOOTNOTEChristopher2019318-16] Christopher 2019, p. 318.

[FOOTNOTEScaliaGarner2008-17] Scalia & Garner 2008.

[18] Colker 1990, pp. 163–164. Morrison 1995, p. 61 n. 41. Goldman 2003, p. 9. DiCioccio & Little 2020, pp. 20–21. Bryant 2024.

[19] DiCioccio & Little 2020, pp. 20–21. See p. 5 for definitions of terms.

[FOOTNOTEColker1990163–164-20] Colker 1990, pp. 163–164.

[FOOTNOTEGavenko2001984-21] Gavenko 2001, p. 984.

[FOOTNOTEEpsteinKobylka1992185–186-22] Epstein & Kobylka 1992, pp. 185–186.

[FOOTNOTEChristopher2019324-23] Christopher 2019, p. 324.

[FOOTNOTEBryant2024-24] Bryant 2024.

[FOOTNOTEHayes2022-25] Hayes 2022.

[FOOTNOTEGoldman20039-26] Goldman 2003, p. 9.

[FOOTNOTESant2013-27] Sant 2013.

[FOOTNOTESeelye2021-28] Seelye 2021.

[FOOTNOTESommerlad2018-29] Sommerlad 2018.

[FOOTNOTERunkle2017-30] Runkle 2017.

[FOOTNOTEStrauss2022-31] Strauss 2022.

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@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 McCorvey was represented by two women, [[Sarah Weddington]] and [[Linda Coffee]]. Weddington was 26 years old when she argued before the Supreme Court in ''Roe''.{{sfn|Prager|2021|p=90}} She had been one of five women in her graduating class of 250 at [[University of Texas Law School]] two years prior.{{sfn|Hanauer|1989}} Only seven women had spoken before the court in the preceding twelve months; there was no women's restroom in the lawyers' lounge.{{sfn|Prager|2021|p=91}} According to court artist Betty Wells and Justice [[Harry Blackmun]], Weddington looked attractive.<ref>{{harvnb|Prager|2021|pp=90-91}}. "So as to better recall the argument of every lawyer come before him, the justice jotted a quick physical description of him or her. As Weddington began now to speak&nbsp;... [w]rote Blackmun: 'large blond hair, rather pretty, plump.{{' "}}</ref> Coffee sat beside her at the table for petitioners' counsel. A number of abortion rights advocates sat in the audience.{{sfn|Prager|2021|p=91}} As counselor for the petitioner, Weddington spoke first. She spoke with an argument style that Mairi N. Morrison in the ''[[UCLA Women's Law Journal]]'' described as "classically female and extraordinary effective".{{sfn|Morrison|1995|loc=p.&nbsp;61 n.&nbsp;41}} She reserved a few minutes of her time for rebuttal, meaning that she would speak briefly after Jay Floyd, the Texas assistant attorney general who represented Wade.{{sfn|Christopher|2019|loc=p.&nbsp;318 n.&nbsp;72}}
-After being introduced by Chief Justice [[Warren E. Burger]], Floyd began,<blockquote>Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.</blockquote> About three seconds of total silence ensued.<ref>{{harvnb|''Roe'' argument|1971|loc=34:12}}. {{harvnb|Sant|2013}}. {{harvnb|Christopher|2019|p=318}}.</ref> [[Margie Pitts Hames]], another abortion rights lawyer who was present, later said: "I thought Burger was going to come right off the bench at him. He glared him down. He got the point right away that this was not appropriate in that court."{{sfn|Garrow|1994}}
+After being introduced by Chief Justice [[Warren E. Burger]], Floyd began,<blockquote>Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.</blockquote> About three seconds of total silence ensued.<ref>{{harvnb|''Roe'' argument|1971|loc=34:12}}. {{harvnb|Sant|2013}}. {{harvnb|Christopher|2019|p=318}}.</ref> [[Margie Pitts Hames]], another abortion rights lawyer who was present, later said: "I thought Burger was going to come right off the bench at him. He glared him down. He got the point right away that this was not appropriate in that court."{{sfn|Garrow|1994}} ''May It Please the Court'', a narrated selection of Supreme Court oral arguments, describes Burger as "annoyed" and the resulting silence as "embarrassed".<ref>{{harvnb|Irons|Guitton|1993|pp=346-347}}. Cited in {{harvnb|Morrison|1995|loc=p.&nbsp;61 n.&nbsp;41}}, and {{harvnb|Gavenko|2001|p=984}}.</ref>
 Floyd was audibly flustered and struggled to recover from the initial blunder.<ref>{{harvnb|Epstein|Kobylka|1992|p=180}}. {{harvnb|Malphurs|2010|p=48}}.</ref> He faltered in the rest of his remarks, sometimes contradicting himself or speaking based on personal opinion.<ref>{{harvnb|Epstein|Kobylka|1992|pp=180-181}}. {{harvnb|Christopher|2019|pp=318-319}}</ref> At two junctures, the audience laughed at his expense, which he appeared to take exception to.<ref>{{harvnb|Christopher|2019|pp=318-319}}.
@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 Weddington felt that Floyd "had argued too many cases in rural Texas, where a little humor would have been received better".{{sfn|Christopher|2019|p=318}} Hames called it "very chauvinistic".{{sfn|Garrow|1994}} Justice [[Antonin Scalia]] (who was not on the court at the time) and scholar [[Bryan A. Garner]] attributed the faux pas to "what [Floyd] probably considered courtly [[Culture of the Southern United States|Southern]] humor".{{sfn|Scalia|Garner|2008}}
-The joke is widely considered to have been [[sexist]] and disrespectful.<ref>{{harvnb|Colker|1990|pp=163-164}}. {{harvnb|Morrison|1995|loc=p.&nbsp;61 n.&nbsp;41}}. {{harvnb|Goldman|2003|p=9}}. {{harvnb|DiCioccio|Little|2020|pp=[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=20 20–21]}}. {{harvnb|Bryant|2024}}.</ref> Rachel L. DiCioccio and Laura E. Little in ''[[Temple Law Review]]'' see it as a "throwback to an earlier era (pre-1960s)" and write that Floyd, in attempting to use [[identification humor]] (connecting with the all-male panel of justices), instead engaged in the more divisive practice of [[differentiation humor]] (mocking Weddington and Coffee for being different from the men).<ref>{{harvnb|DiCioccio|Little|2020|pp=[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=20 20–21]}}. See p.&nbsp;[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=5 5] for definitions of terms.</ref> [[Ruth Colker]] in the ''[[Harvard Women's Law Journal]]'' argues that the joke betrayed {{nowrap|"[t]he}} lack of respect for women embedded in Texas's position". From this she concludes that abortion rights activists were right to pursue constitutional litigation, because "real dialogue is not possible when a base of respect does not exist".{{sfn|Colker|1990|pp=163-164}}
+The joke is widely considered to have been [[sexist]] and disrespectful.<ref>{{harvnb|Colker|1990|pp=163-164}}. {{harvnb|Morrison|1995|loc=p.&nbsp;61 n.&nbsp;41}}. {{harvnb|Goldman|2003|p=9}}. {{harvnb|DiCioccio|Little|2020|pp=[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=20 20–21]}}. {{harvnb|Bryant|2024}}.</ref> Rachel L. DiCioccio and Laura E. Little in ''[[Temple Law Review]]'' see it as a "throwback to an earlier era (pre-1960s)" and write that Floyd, in attempting to use [[identification humor]] (connecting with the all-male panel of justices), instead engaged in the more divisive practice of [[differentiation humor]] (mocking Weddington and Coffee for being different from the men).<ref>{{harvnb|DiCioccio|Little|2020|pp=[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=20 20–21]}}. See p.&nbsp;[https://www.templelawreview.org/lawreview/assets/uploads/2020/04/Little-and-DiCioccio_92_Temp.-L.-Rev.-Online-2.pdf#page=5 5] for definitions of terms.</ref> [[Ruth Colker]] in the ''[[Harvard Women's Law Journal]]'' argues that the joke betrayed {{nowrap|"[t]he}} lack of respect for women embedded in Texas's position". From this she concludes that abortion rights activists were right to pursue constitutional litigation, because "real dialogue is not possible when a base of respect does not exist".{{sfn|Colker|1990|pp=163-164}} From a [[semantic]] perspective, scholar Serge V. Gavenko writes, while the comment was at face value positive, it violated [[Grice's maxims]] with respect to relevance and that it was incongruous given the importance of the proceedings.{{sfn|Gavenko|2001|p=984}}
 == Legacy ==
@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 * {{cite news |last1=Friedell |first1=Deborah |title=A Piece of Pizza and a Beer |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n12/deborah-friedell/a-piece-of-pizza-and-a-beer |access-date=16 March 2024 |work=[[London Review of Books]] |date=23 June 2022 |language=en}}
 * {{cite book |last1=Garrow |first1=David J. |author1-link=David Garrow |title=Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of ''Roe v. Wade'' |date=1994 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] |location=New York City |isbn=9780025427556 |pages=525–526 }}
+* {{cite journal |last1=Gavenko |first1=Serge V. |title=Analysis of the Argumentative Effect of Evaluative Semantics in Natural Language |journal=Computational Science—ICCS 2001 |date=2001 |volume=2073 |pages=979–988 |doi=10.1007/3-540-45545-0_110 |doi-access=free |type=Conference paper}}
 * {{cite journal |last1=Goldman |first1=Jerry |author1-link=Jerry Goldman (academic) |title=To undeaf their ears: the spoken word in a multimedia world |journal=[[IEEE MultiMedia]] |date=October 2003 |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=8–11 |doi=10.1109/MMUL.2003.1237545 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jerry-Goldman-2/publication/3338758_To_Undeaf_Their_Ears_The_Spoken_Word_in_a_Multimedia_World/links/59528022458515a207f7e075/To-Undeaf-Their-Ears-The-Spoken-Word-in-a-Multimedia-World.pdf |access-date=18 March 2024 |via=[[ResearchGate]]}}
+* {{cite book |last1=Irons |first1=Peter H. |last2=Guitton |first2=Stpehanie |author1-link=Peter Irons |title=May It Please the Court: The Most Significant Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court Since 1955 |date=1993 |publisher=[[The New Press]] |location=New York City |isbn=9781565840362 |ol=1743484M}}
 * {{cite journal |last1=Malphurs |first1=Ryan A. |title='People Did Sometimes Stick Things in My Underwear': The Function of Laughter at the U.S. Supreme Court |journal=[[Communication Law Review]] |date=2010 |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=48–75 |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=c6b7ea4691d868a2e3f7b49d73d4adc217eb3072 |access-date=16 March 2024}}
 * {{cite journal |last1=Morrison |first1=Mairi N. |title=May It Please Whose Court: How Moot Court Perpetuates Gender Bias in the Real World of Practice |journal=UCLA Women's Law Journal |date=1995 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=49-84 |doi=10.5070/L361017641 |doi-access=free}}