U.S. Supreme Court justices have cited the prospect of being quoted out of context as one reason for their resistance to cameras in the courtroom. But who needs video when recorded audio, written transcripts and public appearances serve just as well to highlight snippets of the justices' most colorful utterances of 2015.

Here's a look back from some of this year's commentary from the justices—from the bench, written rulings and from public remarks.

Photo: Jonathunder via Wikimedia Commons

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FORTUNE TELLING

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in dissent in the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision in June, commented in a footnote on the soaring language of Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie,” Scalia wrote.