Here come da judge! Here come da judge! Da court’s in session and here come da judge!

Long before the likes of Judge Judy and Judge Mathis came along, there were the “judge” jokes of the 1960s. One, as I recall, went like this:

JUDGE: Madam, why did you shoot your husband with a bow and arrow?

DEFENDANT: Well, you see, your honor, I didn’t want to wake the children.

Small wonder that that brand of humor enjoyed only a brief vogue. But judicial humor may be coming back into style, or at least notice.

A certain Jay D. Wexler, a law professor at Boston University, has taken to monitoring the laughs generated by Supreme Court Justices in the course of oral arguments.

Transcripts of oral arguments before the nation’s highest court have long featured the notation “[laughter]” after a lawyer or judge made a remark that amused. But until 2004, the justices were not identified by name, making it impossible to tell just which of them was being so terribly funny.

Prof. Wexler has taken advantage of the new data to compile an index on the relative hilarity of the nation’s Supreme Court justices. And so the New York Times last week reported Prof. Wexler’s finding that Justice Antonin Scalia is 19 times as funny as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

For that we needed a study?

I read the examples of judicial humor cited in the Times article, and didn’t find any of them particularly amusing.

If I want to quote a Supreme Court justice who was genuinely funny, I usually turn to Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935).

Among my favorite Holmes stories is the one concerning how he was supposed to lecture at a college, and discovered that he had arrived at an insane asylum by mistake. The justice was philosophical. “Oh well,” he said to the guard, “I don’t suppose that there is a great deal of difference.”

For once, the legal eagle was topped. “With great respect, Mr. Justice,” the guard replied, “there is. Before they let you out of this place, you have to show some improvement.”

My last blog, on the rather bland exchanges between lawyers and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, gave me a craving for red meat. So I pulled out my copy of Winston Churchill's marvelous little book, Great Contemporaries, and I turned to the essay on F.E. Smith, a lawyer who later became the first Earl of Birkenhead.

Smith was famous for his stilletto wit, which once drew a pompous rebuke from a presiding judge: "Mr. Smith, have you ever heard a saying by Bacon -- the great Bacon -- that youth and discretion are ill-wedded companions?"

"Yes I have," came the instant repartee. "And have you ever heard a saying of Bacon -- the great Bacon -- that a much-talking judge is like an ill-tuned cymbal?"

Taken aback, the judge resorted to scolding, "You are extremely offensive, young man,"

"As a matter of fact," said Smith, "we both are; but I am trying to be, and you can't help it."

The judge, who apparently had never heard of citing a lawyer for contempt, came back for another drubbing: ""What do you suppose I am on the bench for, Mr. Smith?"

"It is not for me, your honor, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence."

That kind of exchange is something we we will never hear in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Americans are much too dignified for any such thing.

A recent speechwriting assignment had me drafting a speech for a prominent Houston executive to deliver to the local Japan-America Society.

In the course of writing the speech, it occured to me that it would be polite if the speaker were to open and conclude with a few words of Japanese. So I exhausted my entire Japanese vocabulary, beginning with Konnichiwa, for "Good afternoon," and ending with Domo arrigato for "Thank you."

But, knowing how dangerous it is to use foreign languages in a speech unless you are fluent in them, I prudently called the organizer of the event for advice. Sure enough, he informed me that the demands of the occasion required a more subtle and sophisticated use of the Japanese language.

Konnichwa was too informal. The executive should say, Minasama Yoku Irashaimasu, a formal welcome, appropriate since the Consul General of Japan and his wife would be present.

Likewise, the formality of the occasion made Arigatoo Gozaimasu appropriate at the end.

The nice gentleman in charge of the event then helped me with the prononciation, so I could guide the speaker through the Japanese syllables and forestall another potential gaffe.

By way of return, I shared a story with him about the subtleties of the Japanese language that I read years ago in a charming book called, Once A Grand Duke.

The book was an autobiography, written by Grand Duke Alexander of Russia -- an urbane and witty cousin of the last czar who fortunately managed to escape the Bolshevik firing squads.

Alexander had served in the Russian navy when he was a young man. One of his voyages, made somewhere around 1900, had taken him on a goodwill visit to Japan. His ship stayed in port for a few months, and so he engaged a Japanese geisha to see to his comfort. The young woman was a perfect housekeeper, who even taught him to speak Japanese.

So when Alexander was invited to a state banquet in Tokyo, he felt he was more than ready to do his duty as a goodwill ambassador. Seated at a table with the empress, the prime minister and some other high officials, he confidently joined in the conversation. To his acute embarrassment, he had no sooner opened his mouth when the empress took refuge behind her fan, and the other members of the party struggled vainly to suppress their laughter.

Nervously, Alexander turned to the prime minister and asked, "What's wrong? Did I mispronounce?"

"Oh, noooooo, Your Imperial Highness," replied the prime minister, reassuringly, "Your pronounciation was quite correct. It is just that Your Imperial Highness was using a particular kind of Japanese -- a kind not normally used in court circles.

At the close of the evening, the prime minister escorted the thoroughly embarrassed Grand Duke to his carriage. "You must introduce me to your tutor some day," he said with a smile. "I should like to become acquainted with her methods of instruction."

Last week's Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Samuel Alito's fitness for the U.S. Supreme Court put me in mind of an observation by Cardinal Richelieu, the 17th Century French prime minister: "If you will give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Maybe the Senate Democrats were not out to hang Judge Alito, but the lengths to which they were willing to go to scuttle the nomination of an eminent jurist -- one who had received the highest rating of the American Bar Association -- were both desperate and despicable.

Worse for them, the mudslinging backfired. After excoriating Alito for a distant and remote association with a group of Princeton alumni who opposed affirmative action, it came to light that Senator Ted Kennedy was himself still a member of a Harvard alumni group that had been kicked off campus for refusing to admit women.

Latest word is that Sen. Kennedy is resigning from the group as fast as he can, but the stench of hypocrisy will linger long in the committee room from which Judge Alito's wife fled in tears over the surrilous attacks on her husband.

Why are these confirmation hearings so bitter, so personal, and so petty? The likeliest explanation is because so much is at stake. Barring impeachment, Judge Alito could sit on the nation's highest court for ten, twenty, even thirty years, upholding a strict constructionist view of the Constitution. Confronted with a liberal activist nominee, Republicans would probably descend to the same slimy tactics.

I wonder, would these hearings be more civilized if there were a retirement age for Supreme Court Justices, or if they were to serve for a single, fixed term? Is there any good reason in this day and age why justices should serve for life? Partisanship breeds corruption, but life tenure can be just as corrupting in its own way, since it smacks of the divine right of kings. Given the security of a specific term of office, our justices would be just as independent as with life tenure, and they might be a little more humble.

In the early years of the Republic, service in any branch of the national government was seen as a duty and an honor -- not as a career. I for one am sick of professionals in government. I would like see some amateurs go to Washington and shake things up.

Taking aim at life tenure for Supreme Court justices in my last posting has made me bold. Accordingly, I am going to submit for your approval a constitutional amendment that I have been considering for years.

I am a firm believer that elective office should be a public service -- not a career. Once a person is seduced by the prospect of being a career congressman or senator, that person sees his or her first duty as getting re-elected. And we all know what follows from that way of thinking.

If, however, a legislators were limited to a fixed tenure in office, they would, I believe, think more about the national interest than their personal interest, and they would be more concerned about the record they would leave behind once their terms were up, instead of being preoccupied with perpetuating themselves in power.

Term limits, I admit, are not a new idea, but I've given this idea a twist of my own. The constitutional amendment I envision would make several reforms.

First, it would give members of Congress a four-year term instead of the present two-year term. With a two-year term, it's amazing that congressmen have time to think about anything else but raising money for their next reelection campaign. A four-year term, would give them more time to concentrate on the nation's business.

Second, the four-year terms would be staggered, so that half of the House of Representives would be elected every two years, just as Senate terms are staggered so that one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years.

Third, the amendment would stipulate that no member of Congress could serve more than three successive four-year terms, and no member of the Senate could serve more than two successive six-year terms.

Thus, while it would be possible for a person to serve three successive four-year terms in the House, and then serve two six-year terms in the Senate, most of our legislators would end up serving no more than 12 years at a stretch. Is there anybody out there in cyberland who thinks that 12 years is too short a time to make a difference in Washington and then go home?

Furthermore, note the word, "successive." There is nothing in this amendment that would prevent a former congressman or a former senator from running again.

My thinking is that if this amendment were adopted, rotation in office would, over time, produce a sort of congressional alumni society -- that is, a class of fomer senators and congressmen who could help educate the people of their communities on national issues, and who would serve as a ready pool of experienced candidates whenever the voters decided it was time for a change in Washington.

I repeat what I said in my last posting. I'm sick of professional polticians. I want to give the amateurs a chance to shake things up.

House Speaker Dennis Hastart's suggestion last week that lawmakers "don't need to be taken to lunch or dinner by a lobbyist" strikes me as overkill. After all, what respectable member of Congress is going to sell his or her vote for a lousy lunch?

At such moments of high hypocrisy, I wax nostalgic for the earthy wisdom of that great Louisiana Democrat, Senator Russell Long. Long was the son of Huey Long, one of Louisiana's more -- er -- colorful politicians, and chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

Story goes that one summer, the Senator had a intern -- a college student who had a rather naive view of how Washington worked. Long made a pet of the lad, bringing him along to all the lavish social events funded by rich lobbyists to which the Senator was invited almost every evening.

After witnessing night after night of this syberitic entertainment, the young man nervously asked the Senator how he managed to retain his independence after being so extravagantly wooed.

Long put a fatherly arm around the young innocent's shoulders and drawled, "Son, if you can't eat their food, drink their liquor, enjoy their women, and still vote against 'em ... you don't belong here."

This January 27 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While we usually think of Mozart as making music rather than speeches, I can think of one occasion when he made a speech that was as short -- just four words -- as it was appropriate.

The occasion was the opening of his opera, The Marriage of Figaro, in Prague in 1787. The work had initially been performed in Vienna, where it had received a cool reception. But the opening night audience in Prague greeted the new opera with an enthusiasm akin to rapture. When he took his curtain call, the composer was moved to tears by the tremendous ovation he received. He opened his arms and exclaimed: "Meine Prager verstehen mich!" -- "My Praguers understand me!"

They did indeed. Shortly afterwards, Mozart wrote to a friend: "They talk here about nothing but Figaro. Nothing but Figaro is played, trumpeted, sung, whistled. No other opera but Figaro is frequented, Figaro forever. It is certainly a great honor for me."

The success of Figaro led to Mozart's being commissioned to write his next opera, Don Giovanni. But that's another story -- and one without a speech.

January 30 is observed in England and elsewhere in the English-speaking world as the martyrdom of King Charles I, monarch and saint. On this day, white roses are laid at the foot of the king's statue in London.

To modern eyes, Charles appears an unlikely candidate for sainthood. Haughty, headstrong and short-sighted, he held stubbornly to the divine right of kings when a prudent monarch would have accommodated himself to the demands of the dawning modern age.

Charles was not prudent. Whatever qualities may be ascribed to a king who once tried to cram an Anglican prayer book down the throats of his fiercely Presbyterian Scottish subjects, prudence is definitely not one of them.

Yet, when he was humbled by the civil war that he might have avoided had he been willing to compromise, when he was reduced to pitiful status of a prisoner on trial for his life, Charles showed that he possessed at least one royal virtue: courage.

His Puritan conquerors wanted to make sweeping changes in the English constitution and the English church. They knew it would be easier for them to make these changes if they could claim to be acting under the king's authority. Had Charles been a coward, intent only on saving his own skin, they would have had their way. But they misjudged their man. They could kill him if they dared, but he would not consent to be their rubber stamp.

And so, as Winston Churchill wrote, "A strange destiny had engulfed this King of England. None had resisted with more untimely stubbornness the movement of his age. He had been in his heyday the convinced opponent of all we now call our Parliamentary liberties. Yet as misfortunes crowded upon him he increasingly became the physical embodiment of the liberties and traditions of England."

Nowhere was this "strange destiny" more evident than at the king's trial. Dragged before a kangaroo court that had no legitimacy under law or custom, he refused to dignify the proceedings by making an answer to the charges against him.

"I am your King," he declared, speaking for once without the stammer that had dogged him all his life. "I have a trust committed to me by God, by old and lawful descent. I will not betray that trust to answer to a new unlawful authority."

And again: "It is not my case alone, it is the freedom and liberty of the people of England. And, do you pretend what you will, I must justly stand for their liberties. For if power, without law, may make law, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom -- I do not know what subject he is in England can be sure of his life, or anything he can call his own."

When he persisted in his refusal to acknowledge the authority of the court, he was forcibly removed from the chamber. He was not even permitted to speak when he was sentenced to death. But, as he was removed for the second time, he managed to cry out: "I am not suffered to speak ... Expect what justice others may have."

Prophetic words. Charles was succeeded by a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell.

Charles I died with a nobility that recalled Shakespeare's line, "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."

But Churchill wrote him a better epitaph: "He cannot be claimed as the defender of English liberties, nor wholly of the English Church, but none the less he died for them, and by his death preserved them not only to his son and heir, but to our own day."