Happy Friday! You know what that means: time to hear from the celebrity judges in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition in which you will select the next editor of Above the Law. And time to vote, when the polls open later today.

Your judges need no introduction, but for the record:

Later today, we will open the reader polls in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition in which you will select the next editor of Above the Law. Before we do that, however, we'd like to give our panel of "celebrity judges" the chance to weigh in on the contestants.

Reader opinions on the competitors have been all over the map, as well as overwhelming in volume, with hundreds of comments posted in total. So hopefully this concise commentary, from experts in legal blogging, will be clarifying.

To refresh your recollection, the distinguished judges are:

Six lawyers, currently or formerly at large law firms, hoping to make the jump to the writing life (read: working in pajamas). One leading legal tabloid, in need of its next lead editor. A mass of angry anonymous commenters, looking for someone new with whom to have a love-hate relationship.

"THIS.... is ATL Idol."

It's a reality-show-style competition, in which site readers will pick the new editor in chief of AboveTheLaw.com -- the recipient of some 3 million page views a month, described by the Washington Post as "a must-read legal blog." We believe it to be the first time that a full-time blogging gig -- one with a salary you can live on, health insurance, and even a 401(k) -- has been awarded through a "reality blogging" contest.

Back in May, we posted a help wanted ad for a new full-time writer here at Above the Law. Over the weeks that followed, we received a slew of excellent applications. We also located additional prospects through personal networking. All in all, we probably considered almost 100 talented candidates.

We narrowed the list down to six highly impressive finalists. But we found the prospect of choosing just one of them to be agonizing.

So we've decided to outsource this task to you, the readership of Above the Law. Over the next three weeks, the finalists will blog on ATL, for your consideration. Just as they would on a true reality TV show, the "assignments" will vary from week to week (details about them to follow).

Each Friday, we will open the polls, allowing you to vote for your favorite -- the blogger you'd like to see take the helm at this venerable legal tabloid. At the end of week one, the bottom two out of six finalists -- the pair of contestants with the fewest votes -- will be eliminated. Next week, the reader vote will take four finalists down to two. In the third and final week, the two finalists will go head to head, in a legal blogging deathmatch. Your votes will determine the winner, Above the Law's new leader.

ATL readers are an opinionated bunch, so we expect you to have strong views about the contestants (which you should feel free to share in the comments). But to those of you who need more guidance when voting, fear not. Just like American Idol, ATL Idol will provide you with three "celebrity judges," to offer their expert opinions of the contestants' blogging, and to inform and guide the electorate.

Our judges, who are all leading legal bloggers in their own right, need no introduction. But we'll introduce them anyway, briefly. They are (in alphabetical order):

* Al Gore, law school dropout, wins Nobel Peace Prize. [WSJ Law Blog; Washington Post; New York Times]

* Houston crime lab drops the ball, again. [CNN]

* Iraqi families sue Blackwater in U.S. court. [CNN]

* Lithwick's take on the interesting SCOTUS case, Medellin v. Texas. [Slate]

* McCartney-Mills divorce settlement could break records. [MSNBC]

* After typo, infants in Arkansas can't not be allowed to marry. [CNN]

More good press for Jeffrey Toobin's new book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. It scored a front-page review in the New York Times Book Review, which is the Holy Grail of the publishing industry.

But we're partial to this great Slate piece, by Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick (two of our favorite Supreme Court correspondents). Bazelon and Lithwick conduct a meta-review of critical reactions to Jeff Toobin's book, which they use as a jumping off point for broader reflections on media coverage of the Court. They include a generous shout-out to ATL:

One of the oddest byproducts of the Internet has been the growth industry that is the Supreme Court gossip blog. These folks are less interested in the court as the place where Law Is Born, or where Politics Really Come From, and more fascinated by which clerks are sleeping with whom, and how much they earn while doing it.

No blog has a better bead on those items than David Lat's Above the Law. Sure, ATL invariably tends to reduce the entire sweep of modern constitutional history to a form of girl-on-girl Jell-O-wrestling. But then at bottom, what else is there?

As one reader jokingly suggested, "Looks like your Facebook group membership finally paid off!"

Nine Ways To Read The Nine [Slate]
Meet the Supremes [New York Times Book Review]

Okay, so the folks over at TMZ.com don't chase them around yet. But here at ATL, we adore legal celebrities -- and invite you to send in your encounters with them, for our Eyes of the Law sightings column.

Last Friday, for lovers of legal boldface names from the left or the right, William & Mary School of Law was the place to be:

William and Mary Law School (and the College) had a series of speakers of today, all wedged into a very tight schedule. They included:

At noon, former Dean of UC Irvine School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky. Unfortunately, I didn't go to his talk, so I can't say whether he talked about the controversy.

At 1 PM, UC Berkley professor (and evil incarnate if you believe some blogs) John Yoo spoke. Yoo said in his introduction that he was being "wedged in" between "the former Dean of UC Irvine" and Stuart Taylor, who was speaking at 2 on his book on the Duke rape case, "Until Proven Innocent."

We also had a panel on Saturday on "Judicial Modesty," which included such leading lights as Dahlia Lithwick, Michael McConnell, Carter Phillips and Jeffrey Rosen. See here (PDF).

Quite the weekend for legal geeks! (Er. You know. If I was one of them).

Although this tipster wasn't at the Chemerinsky talk, other ATL readers were. Check out this video, posted on the blog of the W&M chapter of the American Constitution Society. Isn't Chemerinsky adorable?

Additional discussion of the Erwin Chemerinsky and John Yoo appearances, after the jump.

We're loving this little dustup over our item about Nina Totenberg getting territorial over seating in the Supreme Court press gallery. It got us a shout-out in the Washington Post. And it's generating celebrity correspondence for us, too.

Over the weekend, we heard from SCOTUS bar superstar Tom Goldstein. And then, this morning, we received this email, from one of our favorite commentators on legal affairs:

From: Dahlia Lithwick
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 10:35 AM
To: David Lat
Subject: one bigger question raised in Divagate

The Wa Po article about Nina said she was "dean" of the Supreme Court press corps.

I have also heard that title applied to both Linda [Greenhouse] and Lyle [Denniston] at various times.

What the heck is that about?

Is it a real position? Is it tenured?

Good questions. It reminds us of "The Tenth Justice," a title that has been bestowed on everyone from the Solicitor General to ex-judge J. Michael Luttig to Howard Bashman (by Howard Bashman).

Also, can you run for this post of "dean"? If the SCOTUS press corps is like high school, is this like being class president? Or prom queen?

If so, we nominate Dahlia Lithwick. She's fabulous! How many Supreme Court correspondents have Facebook fan clubs?

(Linda Greenhouse, eat your (bleeding) heart out....)

Names & Faces: Totenberg's Courtside Seat [Washington Post]
A3G to President Bush: Pick Alito, Not Luttig [Underneath Their Robes]

Earlier: Why Is Nina Totenberg Like Judy Miller?

Ed. note: Today we're pleased to present a guest post by John Carney. He's the editor of our sibling site, DealBreaker, and a non-practicing attorney.

Please note that the views expressed in this post are those of John (and John alone). Unlike John, we HAVE met Dahlia Lithwick, and think she's fabulous -- one of the sharpest and funniest writers about the Supreme Court working today. We admire many members of the SCOTUS press corps -- e.g., Jan Crawford Greenburg, Tony Mauro, Lyle Denniston -- but we don't know of another writer who marries insight and humor the way that Lithwick does. As you can see from our Facebook profile, we are proud members of the We Love Dahlia Lithwick group.

Okay, enough disclaimers. John has a different view -- and since we value viewpoint diversity here at ATL, here it is. Enjoy.

*****************
By JOHN CARNEY

Slate has been running its usual end of term round-up, a back-and-forth between Dahlia Lithwick (at right) and Walter Dellinger. Except for Dellinger’s defense of political speech against the slippery opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s a deeply disappointing discussion. Lithwick, who I have never met, comes off as a deeply frivolous person.

It’s almost hard to write about Lithwick’s view of the school speech case, Morse v. Frederick, without sounding foolish. The case arose when a student unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Lithwick chastises Roberts for reading this as “clearly advocacy of a ‘pro-drug’ message.”

“In Morse, Roberts goes to great lengths to insert meaning into the silliness of the words on the student banner. He insists the phrase ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’can be read as ‘celebrating drug use’; indeed to get there he needed only insert the imaginary words, ‘bong hits [are a good thing].’ When did we enter into the era of constitutional interpretation through inserting pretend words? The sign could have as easily been read to say ‘bong hits [will kill you],’” Lithwick writes.

The most difficult question raised by Lithwick here is whether she’s a liar or a fool. That sounds a bit harsh. But I can't come come up with any other credible explanation for that paragraph. Anyone of normal intelligence understands that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” is drug advocacy. The only question is whether it’s a command that would mean “Do Bong Hits For Jesus” or a confession meaning “I Do Bong Hits For Jesus” or even an offer, as in “I Have Bong Hits Available For Jesus.” In any case, it's undoubtedly pro-drug.

Read the rest, after the jump.

Or, perhaps more importantly, their $200,000 signing bonuses? That's the question Dahlia Lithwick takes on in her recent Jurisprudence column for Slate.

The sums in question are even larger than Lithwick notes. She writes:

That will be [a] $200,000 [bonus] on top of a starting salary of $145,000 to $160,000. Which adds up to an awful lot of Pottery Barn sectional furniture for someone who is, on average, 26 years old and just two years out of school. As Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out recently, that $360,000 beats the heck out of the $212,100 he's taking home for, well, chief justice-ing the entire nation.

Actually, the starting salaries are even higher, since pretty much all firms give Supreme Court clerks seniority credit for their two years of clerking. So a clerk who went straight through to a feeder judge, the SCOTUS, and a private law firm would be paid like a third-year associate: $170,000 in Washington, or $185,000 in New York (or in the D.C. office of a New York firm).

Lithwick interviews Walter Dellinger and Carter Phillips, who offer various justifications for the outsized bonuses as an economic matter. We have our doubts -- and are quoted as a dissenting opinion:

On his legal gossip blog, Abovethelaw.com, David Lat tracks lawyer salaries with the glee most of us reserve for American Idol. And according to him, the hefty law clerk bonus stopped making any real economic sense several decimal points ago. Lat notes that these new associates just don't bill extraordinary hours; that boutique appellate practice isn't that lucrative; and a good many former clerks have academic aspirations. "They're billing 1,800 hours, not 2,500, and a lot of them are probably already working on their job talks," he says, referring to their sales pitches for the academic market.

The real allure of the Supreme Court clerk, says Lat, is that they are trophy purchases, "something for a firm to crow about in their recruiting materials." Ouch. If Lat is correct about this, the boutique firms are buying former Supreme Court clerks when they might be better off investing in something more enduring, like new leather sofas for their lobbies.

We stand by these remarks, but maybe we'd remove the "Ouch." These bonuses don't make pure economic sense (in our opinion); but neither do many other things that law firms spend gobs of money on. If a firm wants to drop $200,000 on a SCOTUS clerk, or on an Alexander Calder for the lobby, that's their prerogative.

We're quoted later in Lithwick's piece:

[S]ome firms, notes Lat, have decided to stop pursing the Supreme Court clerks and spend their recruiting dollars on what he characterizes as the near misses. "For every one of the 36 smartest law kids," he says, "there is another equally smart law kid who just had a bad interview [for a Court clerkship]." And if law firms make the economic decision to give bonuses to them, "they get all the benefits of a knock-off Prada purse: They perform the same function, they look great, and you know they'll do a great job."

We'd single out Kellogg Huber of D.C. as one such firm. Some of you have expressed curiosity about who pays the biggest clerkship bonuses. We believe it's Kellogg Huber. This tiny, super-elite Washington litigation boutique is rumored to pay clerkship bonuses of $100,000 to federal appeals court clerks -- and for that kind of money, combined with the firm's small size, it can afford to be picky. The non-SCOTUS clerks at the firm tend to be those who came thisclose to landing a job at One First Street (e.g., feeder-judge clerks who interviewed unsuccessfully for Supreme Court gigs).

Update: Do you have an opinion on whether Supreme Court clerkship bonuses are too high, too low, or just right? You can express it by voting in our poll. To vote, click here.

What to make of those astronomical Supreme Court signing bonuses? [Slate]

A pair of Volokh Conspirators, Professors James Lindgren and Randy Barnett, at last week's NYLS conference on writing about the law. Inset: Professor Cameron Stracher, who organized the symposium.

In our write-up of the NYLS conference panel on law reviews, we offered the following fashion commentary:

Professors Barnett and Stracher are both rockin' the "downtown auteur" look: black or dark blue suit, dark collarless shirt, no tie. Not bad in a vacuum, but unfortunate that they're on the same panel with the same look (except as to the color of their shirts).

Professor Barnett has taken issue with our observations. He claims that he was wearing a crewneck shirt, while Professor Stracher was wearing a turtleneck -- and that "a world of difference" exists between the two.

We pulled out our photographs of Professors Barnett and Stracher. Professor Barnett is clearly wearing a crew neck -- the same crew neck he's wearing in his website photo, it seems. But we couldn't tell the type of Professor Stracher's collar (above inset).

So we looked up Professor Ann Althouse's more detailed photograph of Professor Stracher (together with yours truly). Yep, that's a turtleneck (although a relatively short one).

We apologize to Professor Barnett, and we regret the error.

In addition, Professor Lindgren wanted to clarify his choice of a button-down shirt (for which we criticized him). He explained that he has several levels of sartorial formality, and he deliberately chose a button-down because he viewed the NYLS conference as calling for a moderate rather than extreme level of formality. Given the fairly laid-back nature of the proceedings, we can see where he's coming from.

For true legal-media-and-academia groupies, additional pictures of top legal journalists and law professor bloggers appear after the jump.

* Dahlia Lithwick on SCOTUS and the death penalty. [Slate]

* A panel of the Seventh Circuit is made up entirely of Sixth Circuit judges sitting by designation. Of course, recusal seems to make sense when the defendant plotted to attack the Seventh Circuit's courthouse. [How Appealing]

* Novak testifies: he got the info from Armitage and Rove. [CNN]

* Pay the judges! [WSJ Law Blog]

* I've my got my mind on my merger and my merger's on my mind. [Law.com]

* AG Gonzales: Federal judges are unqualified to make national security decisions. [MSNBC]

* AG Gonzales: Federal judges should be making national security decisions. [MSNBC; Washington Post]

* Affirmative action takes center stage at Boalt. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Dahlia asks, "Have the Supreme Court's opinions become suggestions in Texas?" [Slate]

* Linda discusses the Texas death penalty cases as well. [New York Times]

* Former Cendant Chairman Walter Forbes get sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison, on accounting fraud charges. The prosecution was handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey; Forbes was represented by Williams & Connolly. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Picking a jury for the Scooter Libby trial in D.C., the biggest small town in America: it ain't easy. [Washington Post]

Our favorite movie of all time is All About Eve (1950). It's the story of a brilliant but aging stage diva, Margo Channing (Bette Davis), and an aspiring actress, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Margo befriends Eve, taking the star-struck youngster under her wing. But then the exceedingly ambitious Eve starts to threaten her mentor's reign as queen of the theater.

The small Supreme Court press corps can be compared to the clubby world of the theater. It's populated by distinguished veterans, like Tony Mauro, and emerging younger talents, like Dahlia Lithwick. (Expressed in Broadway terms, Mauro and Lithwick could be compared to, respectively, Christopher Plummer and Sutton Foster.)

The stage has its great divas -- e.g., Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera -- and so does the SCOTUS press corps. Nina Totenberg is certainly one of them. But the undoubted queen of Supreme Court correspondents is Linda Greenhouse, of the New York Times.

Greenhouse has been covering the Court for almost three decades, since 1978. She enjoys unmatched access to the justices, especially those in the middle and left wings of the Court. Supreme Court justices are notoriously media-shy. But Linda Greenhouse can magically reach them on their cell phones, at any hour, and get them to spill their deepest and darkest secrets. If you want to know whether there was blood in a justice's stool this morning, ask Linda G.

So here's our question:

If Linda Greenhouse is the Margo Channing of Supreme Court reporters, does that make Jan Crawford Greenburg into Eve Harrington?

Just like Eve Harrington, Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News is a talented and attractive young woman, whose star is on the rise. In the past three months, she has scored coveted in-person interviews with almost half of the Supreme Court:

(1) Chief Justice John Roberts, in Miami;

(2) Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer, here in Washington; and

(3) earlier this week, Justice John Paul Stevens (his first network television interview ever).

For all of you non-journalist types, please understand: these are MAJOR COUPS.

And there's more. As Howard Bashman notes, later this month, Greenburg has a "top-secret" new book on the Court coming out. That book, Supreme Conflict, is being touted as drawing upon "unprecedented access to the Supreme Court justices and their inner circles."

(Note to Greenburg's book publicist: We'd love to get a reviewer's copy, if you wouldn't mind sending one our way.)

Call it Greenhouse v. Greenburg. Linda Greenhouse's historic domination of Supreme Court coverage is under siege, as Jan Crawford Greenburg makes some serious inroads at One First Street. And we're not the only ones who have taken notice. Check out Howard Bashman's great interview with La Greenburg, posted just this morning, in which he accurately describes the trajectory of her career as "meteoric."

We will surely piss off some people with this question, but we'll ask it anyway:

Could Greenburg's status as a hottie be contributing in any way, however small, to her journalistic success?

In All About Eve, you will recall, Eve Harrington uses her beauty and charm to seduce theatre critics, writers, and directors.*

Some of you might object: "This whole 'All About Jan' theory is ridiculous. Linda Greenhouse has been covering the Court since Jan Crawford Greenburg was in footsie pajamas. Do you really think LG is about to be supplanted as Empress by some upstart kid?"

We respond by quoting this exchange from All About Eve, between Margo Channing and her lover, Bill Sampson:

BILL: Darling, [to succeed in the theater,] you've got to keep your teeth sharp. All right. But you will not sharpen them on me --- or on Eve...

MARGO: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?

BILL: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it!

But Jan Crawford Greenburg HAS sharpened her pearly whites (which we've admired up close). And she's ready to sink them into Linda Greenhouse.

* Rumor has it that back in the day, as a young and attractive reporter, Nina Totenberg was not averse to "workin' it." If you can confirm this rumor or shed more light on it, please drop us a line.

N.B. We are NOT suggesting that Nina Totenberg pulled The Full Judith Miller. We've simply heard that Totenberg, back when she was a youthful beauty, was highly skilled at deploying feminine charm in getting her sources to talk.

Update: This comment is one of the best compliments we have ever received in our entire life. Addison DeWitt is our idol. Thanks, Michael Doyle!

Interview of Jan Crawford Greenburg by Howard Bashman [How Appealing]
Jan Crawford Greenburg [NewsHour Extra: The Road Taken]
Linda Greenhouse bio [Wikipedia]
All About Eve [IMDb]
All About Eve screenplay [Screenplays for You]
Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court [Amazon]

We agree with Andrew Sullivan: Dahlia Lithwick did a superb job in her write-up of the Scalia-Breyer debate, which took place Tuesday night at the Capital Hilton. We attended as guests of the ACS, whom we thank for their hospitality.

For our fourth and final post about the evening -- prior posts here, here, and here -- we'll quote liberally from Lithwick's great Slate piece, with commentary of our own appended and interspersed.

It all appears after the jump.

Question: Now that the Supreme Court is hearing hardly any cases these days, how are the justices spending all their free time?

Answer: On constitutional law road shows, in which they debate the proper way to go about interpreting that foundational document. What fun!

On Tuesday, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen G. Breyer held forth on the subject before a packed ballroom at the Capital Hilton. The event was co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. It ran for about an hour and a half; Jan Crawford Greenburg, of ABC News, served as moderator.

Our prior coverage of the event appears here and here (photos). Our third installment appears after the jump.

The Supreme Court heard a number of interesting oral arguments this week -- and we're way behind in our coverage of them. We're working on catching up.

On that note, it's too bad that audio recordings of this week's SCOTUS arguments aren't available. As noted by the WSJ Law Blog, the Court released same-day printed transcripts in Watters v. Wachovia Bank and the greenhouse gas case -- but no audio broadcasts or same-day recordings.

This was pursuant to the Court's policy of selectively releasing recordings based on whether there is "heightened public interest" in a case -- i.e., whether it involves a hot-button issue. And these two cases, despite their major implications for business, environmental law, and federal-state relations, didn't make the cut.

We'd like to echo Dahlia Lithwick's recent call for the Supreme Court to revisit this policy of selective audio-casting:

If the Supreme Court justices really want the public to recognize that what they do is subtle and legal, as opposed to ideologically driven, why would they release the audio in precisely those cases in which they are most stridently split? Why reinforce the stereotype of a partisan 5-4 court that splits along the most-basic liberal/conservative lines?

(Oh, and Howard Bashman is with us on this -- which means that of course we're right.)

Releasing same-day audio tapes of ALL Supreme Court oral arguments, regardless of the level of "public interest," would take a clean, bright-line approach to the issue. It would allow the public to learn more about the workings of the Court, but without the intrusion of cameras in the courtroom. Justice Breyer wouldn't have to worry about television close-ups of his wattle; Justice Scalia could leave his eyebrows au naturel.

Finally, same-day audio release would save the Court -- or the Court's Public Information Office -- from having to determine whether a case is "sexy" enough to merit broadcast. Because do you really want Kathy Arberg deciding what's sexy?

(Speaking of Kathy Arberg, a few weeks ago the Supreme Flacktress put up a "help wanted" sign at One First Street. Out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the position is still open?)

Listen Up: The Supreme Court's hot/cold audio-casting policy [Slate]
Should Congress Mandate Supreme Court TV? [Law.com via How Appealing]
Listen to Today’s Supreme Court Oral Arguments... Not! [WSJ Law Blog]

* When committing a robbery, try not to target a master of illusion. [CNN]

* Another legal show goes the way of "The Law Firm." [CNN]

* Dahlia Lithwick begins this article, "Chief Justice John Roberts is the Dr. McDreamy of the federal bench." [Slate]

* Dismissal sought in the CIA leak case. [AP]

* Justice Kennedy, the likely swing vote in Monday's decision in Ayers v. Belmontes, also holds the critical vote in deciding the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Here's some interesting commentary on last week's oral arguments. [SCOTUSblog]

Some of you think we give Dahlia Lithwick, the legal affairs writer for Slate, a hard time. And it's true that we often disagree with her (even if we always acknowledge her writerly talent). But we do find ourselves agreeing with much in her latest piece, criticizing recent critiques of the news media by several Supreme Court justices.

In response to Justice Antonin Scalia's remarks during a panel sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, Lithwick writes:

Scalia said, "The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately." It seems our reporting is limited to: "Who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy?"

I'm still running the Nexis search for the reporting on last spring's campaign-finance reform decisions that includes the terms "little old lady" and "scuzzy guy." But it seems to me the reporting on that case was a lot clearer than the opinions.

And although, if anything, the Supreme Court press corps is hypercautious in its attention to legal detail at the expense of sensationalism, Scalia dismisses them, and their readers, because, in his view, "nobody would read it if you went into the details of the law that the court has to resolve."

While we agree with Justice Scalia's general point that news accounts of court cases often focus more on the facts, including facts about the parties, and less on the legal issues -- which may not be surprising, given that the facts are more accessible to a lay audience -- we do believe that most Supreme Court reporters try their best to explain the legal nitty-gritty to their readers. And many of them -- including Lithwick, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times, and Charles Lane of the Washington Post -- have formal legal training.

A little bit more, after the jump.

After yesterday's discussion of Tequilagate, the pseudo-scandal in which Justice Antonin Scalia stands accused of racial insensitivity for a passing reference at oral argument to Mexico's national drink, we received this reader email:

Scalia's "tequila" comment from the other day reminded me of a remark he made during oral argument in Hoffman Plastics, an immigration case from a few years ago. He made some crack about illegal immigrants who could stay home all day, eat "bon bons," and get paid for it -- if the NLRB had their way. I was surprised there was no outrage over that.

Intrigued by this, we tracked down the Hoffman Plastics oral argument transcript (PDF). And here's what we discovered:

QUESTION: If he's smart he'd say, how can I mitigate, it's unlawful for me to get another job.

MR. WOLFSON: Justice Scalia --

QUESTION: I can just sit home and eat chocolates and get my back pay.

MR. WOLFSON: I don't agree that the board would have to accept such a representation....

"Chocolates"? That's much tamer, and far less snarky, than "bonbons."

We checked back with our tipster, who claimed a distinct recollection of "bon bons." So here's what we're wondering: Might Supreme Court oral argument transcripts get "scrubbed," a la Congressional ones?*

This seems inconceivable to us. Such shadiness would be SO Article I -- like sending nasty emails about masturbation to underage male pages...

But we don't have the audiotape, so we don't know for sure. If you also happened to be in the Hoffman Plastic audience and can recall whether Nino referred to "chocolates" or "bon bons," we'd love to hear from you.

Of course, even if Nino did refer derisively to bonbon-popping illegal immigrants, it might not be seen as THAT problematic. After all, there's no negative stereotype about undocumented aliens gorging themselves on bon bons -- unless they're French.

A "bon bon" remark might be viewed as slightly un-PC, in a "Let them eat cake" kind of way. Liberals might say: "Justice Scalia, how insensitive of you to refer to illegal immigrants eating bon bons! Don't you know that they're working day and night to obtain the bare necessities of life -- not Teuscher champagne truffles?"**

But compared to other controversial things Justice Scalia has said (and done) over the years, it would be a pretty minor infraction.

Update: Oh darn. This has ruined our Friday. But thanks, Ben, for digging up the audio tape!

* We'd object to replacing "bon bons" with "chocolates." The terms are not interchangeable. A bonbon is a very specific, especially indulgent type of sweet: "a candy with a fondant center, often with fruit or nuts, covered in fondant or chocolate."

The word "chocolate" doesn't convey the same decadence as "bonbon." We might go instead with "truffles" (as in chocolates, not gourmet fungi).

** Teuscher champagne truffles are endorsed by Oprah -- so they've got to be good. Says La Oprah: "They make the little hairs on my head rise. It's so sinful!"

Oral Argument Transcript in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB [Supreme Court official website (PDF)]
HOFFMAN PLASTIC COMPOUNDS, INC. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD [Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School]
Bonbon [Wikipedia]

Earlier: A Tempest Over Tequila
How Many Drunk Mexicans Live In Dahlia's Head?

We recently received an interesting piece of reader feedback that we'd like to pass along to you. It relates to the recent Tequilagate scandal, which we previously deemed to be "kinda stupid."

We predict that we'll get some hate mail and negative comments over this (perhaps from the webmaster of this site). But we'll push ahead anyway. If we were thin-skinned, we wouldn't be in this line of work.

Here's what one reader had to say to us:

I think you should do another post on Dahlia Lithwick, turning the "Tequilagate" scandal on her. Because, really, saying that there is a stereotype of drunken Mexicans is racist in itself, since she basically invented the stereotype.

Like if someone said, "An Irish thief," and I responded, "That's racist. How dare you appeal to the stereotype of theiving Irish," that would be weird, because the stereotype doesn't exist. We're drunks, not theives.

As reflected in this post and this one, here at ATL we strive for complete accuracy in racial and ethnic stereotyping. So we thank our reader for this valuable input.

(Okay, that's all we really wanted to say. If you're fine with this, then you can stop here. But if you're inclined to disagree or attack us, please continue reading. Two notes of anticipatory defense appear after the jump.)