"Recently I lost my luggage," Justice Kennedy said. "I had to go to the lost and found at the airline, and the lady said has my plane landed yet."

"[Laughter.]"

Professor Wexler concedes that his methodology is imperfect. The court reporters who insert the notations may, for instance, be unreliable or biased.

The simple notation "[laughter]" does not, moreover, distinguish between "a series of small chuckles" and "a joke that brought the house down." Nor, Professor Wexler said, does it separate "the genuine laughter brought about by truly funny or clever humor and the anxious kind of laughter that arises when one feels nervous or uncomfortable or just plain scared for the nation's future."

Partisans of particular justices may raise objections as well. The raw numbers for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who produced 12 laughs, understate his wit, as he missed more than 30 arguments in the term because of illness. He died in September.

Justice Ginsburg's poor showing may in part be a matter of misperception based on her grave mien.

"It is widely believed that Justice Ginsburg doesn't even laugh herself, much less make others laugh," Professor Wexler, a law clerk for her in 1998 and 1999, wrote. "I can attest that she does, in fact, laugh. Maybe not often, perhaps not loudly or with great vigor and the wild waving of arms, but laugh she does."

Justice Scalia's numbers may similarly overstate his wit, if only because the courtroom expects quips from him and may laugh at the least provocation. Also, he tried hard.

"He plays to the crowd," said Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor and Supreme Court advocate who has garnered her own share of laughter notations in the transcripts.