So Ordered
AI-narrated readings of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions. Each episode pairs the Court's syllabus with a reading of the majority opinion, lightly adapted for listening and voiced by a synthesized voice styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice.
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What this is
So Ordered publishes unabridged readings of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions.
SCOTUS provides recordings of oral arguments freely to the public, but at this time the Court does not release audio of opinions being read. That leaves an accessibility gap for parts of the public who would rather engage with the Court’s opinions by ear.
This project aims to fill that gap by providing audio readings of majority opinions in AI-synthesized voices.
Each episode has two parts:
- A short introduction — the case name and docket number, along with a brief summary drawn from the Court’s published syllabus, the Questions Presented, the holding, and the vote breakdown.
- The majority opinion, read start to finish in a synthesized voice lightly stylized to resemble the authoring justice.
The text read aloud is the opinion as published by the Supreme Court, with light edits made only to aid the readability of the spoken version. For example, citations to specific page numbers and volumes are simplified or omitted, because numerical citations do not translate well to audio.
Why
Supreme Court opinions are public-domain government works, but they are written to be read, not heard. A spoken reading makes them accessible while commuting, exercising, or away from a screen — without the gloss of a host’s interpretation between you and the Court’s words.
Our Goal
So Ordered’s ultimate goal is to become obsolete.
This podcast would prefer a world where the Supreme Court released audio of the justices reading their opinions and made it freely available, the same way it releases oral arguments. That would give the public direct access to rulings that can affect millions of people.
Until that audio is freely available, our goal is to provide a public service that lets people connect with the Court’s opinions through an audio medium.
Sourcing & licensing
Opinion text comes directly from supremecourt.gov. U.S. Supreme Court opinions are works of the federal government and are in the public domain (17 U.S.C. § 105). This podcast’s audio is released under CC0.
Latest episodes
All episodes →- Ellingburg v. United States The Court holds that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 is criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The statute's text and structure — it labels restitution a penalty for an offense, is codified in the criminal code, and is imposed at sentencing alongside imprisonment and fines — make that conclusion plain, even though Congress also intended restitution to compensate victims.
- Watson v. Republican National Committee The Court holds that the federal election-day statutes do not require absentee ballots to reach election officials by election day. Because an "election" is the electorate's choice of candidate, and that choice is complete when voting ends rather than when ballots arrive, Mississippi may count absentee ballots that are postmarked by election day and received up to five business days later.
- Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton The Court holds that Rule 60(c)(1)'s requirement that a motion be made within a reasonable time applies to a Rule 60(b)(4) motion alleging that a judgment is void. A motion for relief from an allegedly void judgment is a "motion under Rule 60(b)," so the Rule's default time limit reaches it — resolving a split in which the Sixth Circuit stood alone against every other circuit.
- National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Comm’n The Court holds that the Federal Election Campaign Act's limits on how much a political party may spend in coordination with its own candidates violate the First Amendment. The base limits on contributions to candidates, the earmarking rules, and the disclosure requirements already serve the Government's interest in preventing circumvention, so the coordinated-expenditure caps are disproportionate and are not necessary and narrowly tailored. Colorado II, which had upheld those caps in 2001, is overruled.
- Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment The Court holds that an Internet service provider is not contributorily liable for its subscribers' copyright infringement merely because it knew certain accounts were being used to infringe and kept serving them. Contributory liability requires that the provider intended its service to be used for infringement, which can be shown only by inducement or by a service tailored to infringement — and Cox did neither.