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Last time an article about this came up, it was argued that we should be assuming that the justices know what they're doing. They are the supreme court, after a
by saulrh 15y ago
Last time an article about this came up, it was argued that we should be assuming that the justices know what they're doing. They are the supreme court, after all, so they probably understand the patents they're ruling on and the results of their rulings. This article demonstrates that we can't make that assumption:
He was stunningly interrupted by the rookie Justice on the
far left seat, Justice Sotomayor. It was stunning since she
sounded so off-base. She asked about the “actual machine.”
In an argument about treatment, knowledge and diagnosis,
where neither the drug or the blood testing were at issue,
“machine” sounded uninformed. Our reporter looked down. He
was embarrassed for the Justice.
- einhverfr 15y agoWhat one hopes is that they might have clerks who can help them with these things. In general the Supreme Court justices themselves are not people I would choose to look to for gurus on technology.
- jerrya 15y agoWhile all justices have been attorneys, there is no constitutional requirement that a justice be an attorney, and not a doctor/scientist/business man. Since justices do rely on clerks, it's not clear to me that an accomplished anything other than a judge could not be brought up to speed on the law. It is a shame that the justices seem to avoid each other and do not appear to work in a team. Imagine a team of justices that could rely on one being an MD, one being a civil engineer, one being an entrepreneur that could lead/organize tutorial sessions for the others. Many of the current justices don't even have courtroom experience.
- einhverfr 15y agoI think it would be great if we had at least one non-lawyer on the Supreme Court. It would lead to opinions that more people could easily read. Alas, few people agree with me (and none of them in the legal profession, wonder why....)
- lotu 15y agoIt's because lawyers understand how very, very, very bad things can get when you put people without an intimate understanding of the functioning of the law in-charge of overseeing it. Using lawyers is just very bad.
- willyt 15y agoWhat do you mean by very very very bad? Could you give an example.
- einhverfr 15y agoI didn't say that even a majority should be non-lawyers. I meant there should be non-lawyers on the court. It's not unprecedented. But in terms of overseeing the law, are you saying non-lawyers should be ineligible to run for Congress?
- AutoCorrect 15y agoand there's the problem: if you have to have people that specialize in understanding the law, the law is too complex to be allowed to continue in that form. How can a 'normal' person abide by the law if they can't understand it?
- rdtsc 15y ago> What one hopes is that they might have clerks who can help them with these things. Those clerks would be easy prey for lobbyists. "Here is a small gift, make sure to interpret this patent for Sotomayor using this kind of language and not that kind."
- gwern 15y agoFunnily enough, I saw that argued just the other day in http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/12/08/selective-use-of-technology-2/ http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/12/08/selective-use-of-te...