During oral arguments in Cohen v. California, Chief Justice Burger famously told Melvin Nimmer that the Court was familiar with the facts of the case, and he didn’t need to say “Fuck the Draft.” He promptly ignored that, and said “Fuck” over and over again. Via a story I heard from Floyd Abrams, Nimmer apparently insisted on cursing to convey the impact of those words. In Justice Harlan’s majority opinion, he used the phrase “Fuck the Draft.”

Today’s Court is much more prudish. In Fox v. FCC, Justice Scalia bleeped out the words “fuck” and “shit.”

The first order to this effect dealt with an NBC broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards, in which the performer Bono commented, “`This is really, really, f* * *ing brilliant.'” … The first occurred during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, when the singer Cher exclaimed, “I’ve also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So f* * * `em.” … “Why do they even call it `The Simple Life?’ Have you ever tried to get cow s* * * out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f* * *ing simple.”

In Elonis, the Chief bleeped out several bad words:

Y’all sayin’ I had access to keys for all the f***in’ gates …  Whoever thought the Halloween Haunt could be so f***in’ scary?”

You know your s***’s ridiculous …  Took all the strength I had not to turn the b**** ghost … S***, I’m just a crazy sociopath … that gets off playin’ you stupid f***s like a fiddle … And if you really believe this s***

But Justice Alito used the phrase “ass.”

“‘If I only knew then what I know now . . . I would have smothered your ass with a pillow, dumped your body in the back seat, dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like a rape and murder.’ ”

A quick Westlaw search shows that “ass” has been used several times in a recent years, including in McCreary County v. ACLU (“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet th[y] neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass.”)