A good friend of mine who's a well regarded lawyer stated "the author's grasp of law is actually worse than the SCOTUS lack of understanding of technology" He also mentioned this smacked a little of age bias and navel gazing. When you think if the issues the SCOTUS has to address (medical/financial etc) you realize they're never going to be specialists and never have.
While I doubt that many 75-year-olds waste time at work perusing HN, the article misses, downplays or misunderstands several important points:<p>The justices' often use apparently clueless analogies to prompt the attorneys during oral arguments; these are suggestions that the argument needs to be clarified or reframed. Ultimatley, it's the attorneys job to make their cases, no matter how seemingly clueless the court might be.<p>Much/most of the real work at SCOTUS is done by clerks, some of sharpest young minds in the US. I'm betting they will peruse HN for background on issues.<p>It's incredibly easy to cherrypick from the vast library of court opinions for a few rotten tomatoes to throw at a straw man.
I consider myself technologically literate, yet still everyday I ask questions and attempt to boil down complex ideas into understandable concepts. Sometimes for myself, sometimes for others around me.<p>I would be more concerned if the justices didn't ask the "dumb" questions or if they didn't try to comprehend using analogies, etc.
The author pointed out a few dubious instances of tech illiteracy. The one about Ebay being an Invention. I
didn't think Ebay was an invention? I think what the
author doesn't take into account is the the Justices have
access to consultants, and staffers. The Supreme Court makes decisions in Bioscience; I think they can handle
stuff on technology? I wish all writers, speakers, and
Bloggers would stop using phrases like "pushback". I always
thought Patent Troll was a bad choice of words for describing a complex problem. The Supreme Court will always
be very political. The cases are not settled just on the
law, or facts. It scares me just how much power they have--especially when it goes against what I think is fair, or right.
"The problem is that the justices were groomed in a field that emphasizes reasoning by analogy."<p>That doesn't excuse them form actually understanding the issues and terms at hand. Analogies are good for a lot of things, but they're awful for many others, including most technologies. Instead of using an analogy to understand the cloud, they could use a definition: "other people's servers." It seems to me that this is indeed a failing on the justices' part to put in effort to understand technologies that they rule on time and time again. This is no surprise as they constantly ignore scientific evidence in their rulings.<p>This isn't stupidity, it's and abdication of their duty. Either way, both things lead to horrible rulings like the Aereo one.
This is what it takes to actually maybe get before the Supreme Court. Hint: they don't yet accept 8.5" x 11" paper from most filers.<p><a href="http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=87" rel="nofollow">http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=87</a><p>Instead, they prefer a paper size based upon the Royal octavo:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavo" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavo</a>
This society is gradually, transparently bending to the will of those in position of high influence. It appears the public does (a) not seem to care or (b) lacks knowledge of the happenings since the government info spill. I wonder how long it'll take to transform into Continuum (series).