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April 22, 2010 04:45 AM UTC

Supreme Court Woefully Technologically Illiterate

  • 13 Comments
  • by: redstateblues

In an age when the law and technology are becoming more and more intertwined thanks to the communication tools like the Internet and cell phones, the reports coming in from the US Supreme Court today during oral arguments for the case City of Ontario v. Quon are raising some eyebrows. Check out this article that I swear isn’t from The Onion:

The first sign was about midway through the argument, when Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. – who is known to write out his opinions in long hand with pen and paper instead of a computer – asked what the difference was “between email and a pager?”



At one point, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked what would happen if a text message was sent to an officer at the same time he was sending one to someone else.

“Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?'” Kennedy asked.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrangled a bit with the idea of a service provider.

“You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?” he asked.

Then he asked whether they can be printed out in hard copy.

I could almost start to forgive them for being old fogeys who aren’t really hip to the new fangled gadgets, but this case isn’t even about new technology. It’s about pagers that can receive text messages. What’s disturbing about this is that the Supreme Court doesn’t understand technology that became obsolete before I got to high school.

Or, as my friend put it, “What is the difference between e-mail and a pager? I mean it’s not like either of those have been around for 20+ years.”

Comments

13 thoughts on “Supreme Court Woefully Technologically Illiterate

  1. There is a need for those who understand the complexities of making quill pens.

    While reading the report all I could think of is there must be a magic chamber in which the newly appointed judges go to have all knowledge of civilization post 1765 removed. Something similar to that which the Pope goes, except that one is set to 950.  

      1. That’s what I mean – they go into the magic chamber and all traces of modern life and thinking get flushed out (primarily affects R’s).

  2. ….the Supreme Court is it’s own closed island in the 3rd branch of gov’t. They do their own thing, including being techno-illiterate.

    The rest of the US Courts are wired hard to new tech. When Snowmaggedon closed DC, amost 80% of the staff was working from home on personal PCs or Laptops provided by the gov’t. The District courts are just as wired, if not more so – one of the internal pieces we just finished is a warning to Judges not to use their Crackberrys for everything!

    Once we get the new US Courts website and YouTube channel up, I’ll put out links about this…

  3. (I don’t know how many or to what extent) may be explained, at least in part, by the peculiarities of legal reasoning.

    Roberts’ first question, for instance, may well have been (and I suspect was) a question about the legal difference, rather than about the technological difference. I can very well imagine a completely tech-savvy appellate judge asking a lawyer making oral arguments before him precisely that question, as part of the process of eliciting the legal arguments that would decide the case.

    Legal reasoning is all about hair-splitting. You see questions like this in all sorts of contexts sprinkled throughout Supreme Court (and appellate court) decisions, simply because the whole thrust of the arguments they are weighing is the splitting of hairs for legal advantage.

      1. in a vacuum.

        But when you consider that those kinds of questions are exactly the kinds of questions typical of legal arguments, for reasons other than technological ignorance, and that it is very unlikely for any moderately well-educated 50-something year old (who has almost certainly dealt with these devices in previous cases that he has heard in his career) not to know the difference between a pager and email, the more reasonable assumption in context is that it was a legal rather than technical question (e.g., “for the purposes of the legal distinction currently under consideration, what’s the difference between…?”).

        I have no love for Roberts, but I am no fan of basing conclusions on emotional or political convenience rather than on the most assiduously applied reason. It’s certainly possible that Roberts didn’t know the difference between a pager and email, but it’s more likely that it was a legal distinction he was referring to.

        1. Steve, you may be entirely correct, but it’s WAY more fun to make wisecracks about the Supremes being technologically retarded.  (OMG!! She used the “R” word!!)

          Writing decisions longhand on a pad of paper?  I imagine him handing it to his clerk who finished at the top of his class at Hahvahd law and saying, “James, will you please type this up for me?”  C’mon!

          1. Gotcha.

            But, as for me, I’m always trying to put the “fun” back into “functional,” and take it out of “dysfunctional” (which leaves you with “dysctional”).

            Besides, nothing’s more fun than finishing up a tax policy seminar paper on the relative merits of a carbon tax v. cap-and-trade, and the future possibilities for political market instruments (the last part is my own sci-fi contribution to policy analysis).

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