The Volokh Conspiracy - Movie Day at the Supreme Court:

I was reminded recently of this remarkable story, from Woodward & Armstrong’s excellent The Brethren. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Court’s obscenity doctrine essentially called for case-by-case Supreme Court decisionmaking about whether various films were obscene. Those Justices who took this view therefore watched the movies, together with the clerks. Here’s one item that stuck in my head: During his later years, Harlan [who was by then nearly blind -EV] watched the films from the first row, a few feet from the screen, able only to make out the general outlines. His clerk or another Justice would describe the action. “By Jove,” Harlan would exclaim. “Extraordinary.”

egn: My favorite story from “The Brethren” — possibly also apocryphal — was Justice Marshall attempting to confound Chief Justice Burger by yelling “Hey, Chiefy Baby!” when passing him in the halls.

Allen G: I remember that part of The Brethren. The part I remembered was a running joke among the clerks, who made fun of Potter Stewart’s famous line by calling out “I know it when I see it!” when the graphic sex took place.

Calderon: Allen G’s line is the one I remember best from the Brethren. Clerks watching the movies and whispering to themselves “that’s it! that’s it!”

The last one I remember is the story about some truly hardcore porno movie where at the very end a nude woman stands up in converible car and gives a brief lecture on the merits of capitalism versus communism. That had to be hilarious.