5 ms·

"Snubs" doesn't really seem appropriate here as prose. There are plenty of issues with SCOTUS and the US judiciary one could complain about, but a simple one is

by xoa 3y ago

"Snubs" doesn't really seem appropriate here as prose. There are plenty of issues with SCOTUS and the US judiciary one could complain about, but a simple one is simply that at the end of the day there is one supreme court of 9 people and they physically can only handle so many cases per year. LOTS or cases of way more fundamental importance then this one get declined every year because only a fraction of those seeking appeal to SCOTUS can possibly get it even if they thought all of them were worthy, which they aren't. At the end of the day this particular case doesn't really seem to rise to that level. There's no big circuit split, no deep constitutional issues, no enormous injustice to individual people, lower courts don't seem to have gotten anything particularly wrong given the current state of the law, and Congress could certainly step in if it wanted in ways much more fine tuned. Each company has plenty of money to be made out of it but that's about it. Neither side got everything they wanted. I'd personally like to see a federal law trying a scalpel first, where at purchase time people can elect to have the ability to add to the root key store of any hardware they buy, or entrust that to the manufacturer instead. That'd preserve most if not all of the benefits for those who don't want to have to deal with that like right now, and wish to pool their collective purchasing power with Apple or whomever to enforce certain standards on developers. But it'd mean anyone who wanted to could also venture forth from the walled garden and small devs who wanted to focus on that could do so. In terms of power balance I think it'd work out pretty well, the biggest players also want to reach the broadest audience and thus would face more restrictions, whereas small focused devs fine catering to a devoted fanbase, or pure open source, would have the most freedom. It's kinda too bad so much of the conversation is binary of "complete jailed garden" like right now vs "devs getting to do whatever they want to everyone whether they like it or not" like on the PC.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
We have millions of people talking about this case today. I find it absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time.
- granzymes 3y ago
  The Supreme Court does not decide cases: it decides questions. Whether or not the case is interesting, the legal questions the parties asked the Court to resolve were evidently not worth its time.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  What does "interesting" have to do with it? Millions of people talk about all sorts of stupid shit that happens in current pop culture (including me!). I am very interested in the outcome of this case. I also absolutely do not care for the idea of the Supreme Court wasting one hour on it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time This is why “snubs” is misleading. This case has been extensively argued. SCOTUS is saying no novel legal questions are apparent to it; the appeals court is affirmed.
- mrandish 3y ago
  The POV you express is quite common but it's mistaken in that it assumes the role of the courts is to "fix" things, when it is not. Their role is to apply the law as written consistently. While the word "fairly" is often used in place of "consistently", that can lead to confusion because some people mistake the word "fairness" in this context as meaning "morally fair" judicial outcomes. While "moral fairness" does sometimes happen as a result of applying the law consistently, it's not the primary goal or purpose of courts. When things in society are happening that are unfair or otherwise wrong, blaming the courts is like blaming the CPU instead of the programmer. In the US, the "programmer" is congress (the legislative branch). They write the code. The courts in this analogy are the CPU. Their job is to run the code as written correctly and consistently. If the outcomes aren't satisfactory, it's either a bug, missing feature or unhandled exception in the code. The Supreme Court's primary job is to fix system bugs at the micro-code and kernel levels, stuff like scope violations, etc, when the system runs correct code improperly. It's very rare for the issue behind "bad or unexpected outcomes" to be due to the micro-code or kernel but it can happen. Those rare times are when you call the Supremes. When the Supremes pass on accepting a case without comment, it's like rejecting a bug report, often due to it being a bug in the application-level code. In those cases passing is like responding "Not our Bug." Other times they are basically saying the issue is due to a program using system-level APIs in undefined ways. From their perspective, the system responding to ill-defined or undefined instructions with unexpected or inconsistent results is actually correct, so they respond with "Won't Fix (GiGO)". No one wants the CPU making up how to correctly respond to undefined instructions on its own. This is why the phrase "Courts don't make they law, they apply the law" is such a mantra. In this case, congress hasn't yet written any code designed to directly address this use case. If we want to "fix" things we need to get the feature approved and on the legislative backlog to be addressed in a future sprint.
  - riwsky 3y ago
    This idealism ignores decades of the Supreme Court acting as a shadow legislature on topics as broad as environmental protections and sexual freedom. Roe v Wade, and decades later Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are not matters of microcode.
mrandish 3y ago
I agree that SCOTUS passing is correct and with everything else in your first paragraph as to why. Addressing the issue would certainly be the job of the legislative branch but I question whether they should try to address this with a law. My feelings on this are a bit conflicted because I truly hate "Jailed Gardens" and wish they didn't exist. However, I also know that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draft legislation that responds to dynamic, rapidly evolving problems in open-ended domains like high tech. It almost always ends up being ineffective, subverted or causing unintended consequences downstream. As much as I hate it, in areas of governance often the only viable options are all non-optimal in various ways. In this case, I think the 'least bad' approach is to let Apple have their jailed garden and run it the way they want to (short of demonstrable anti-trust, of course). Personally, I opted out of Apple devices a long time ago for this very reason and use Android devices I can root and modify however I want. After all, some people like living in the iOS jailed garden and appreciate the benevolent dictator keeping them safe and making their decisions for them (or are at least willing to tolerate the costs for the benefits). For my part, this is just another of those things I really don't like but for which reflexively calling "Thar oughtta be a LAW!" would be ineffective or make things worse. The road to dystopias is paved with the good intentions of those trying to legislatively enforce idyllic utopias. It's annoying but maxing broad freedom to choose often requires tolerating the annoying behavior of others maxing their freedom to choose (including those selling time-shares in an idyllic garden-jail).
kelnos 3y ago
Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved". Even for a hugely important issue, they might decline to hear the case on those grounds, if they think the lower court got it right. For some types of hugely important issues, of course, they might choose to take the case anyway (even if just to affirm the lower courts ruling), in order to establish binding precedent over all federal circuit districts (and below).
- xenadu02 3y ago
  > Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved". This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar. The federal court view is that the courts cannot and should not be the venue to solve all problems. Congress should get off its lazy butt and legislate.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    >This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar. This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS)
    - xenadu02 3y ago
      >> "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved" > This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS) No I was correcting the idea that by passing on a case SCOTUS is blessing the lower court opinion. SCOTUS passes on cases where the justices might completely disagree with the lower court or appellate decision. They pass on cases they think are a huge injustice too.

by xoa 3y ago

thomastjeffery 3y ago

We have millions of people talking about this case today. I find it absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time.

granzymes 3y ago
The Supreme Court does not decide cases: it decides questions. Whether or not the case is interesting, the legal questions the parties asked the Court to resolve were evidently not worth its time.
happytoexplain 3y ago
What does "interesting" have to do with it? Millions of people talk about all sorts of stupid shit that happens in current pop culture (including me!). I am very interested in the outcome of this case. I also absolutely do not care for the idea of the Supreme Court wasting one hour on it.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time This is why “snubs” is misleading. This case has been extensively argued. SCOTUS is saying no novel legal questions are apparent to it; the appeals court is affirmed.
mrandish 3y ago
The POV you express is quite common but it's mistaken in that it assumes the role of the courts is to "fix" things, when it is not. Their role is to apply the law as written consistently. While the word "fairly" is often used in place of "consistently", that can lead to confusion because some people mistake the word "fairness" in this context as meaning "morally fair" judicial outcomes. While "moral fairness" does sometimes happen as a result of applying the law consistently, it's not the primary goal or purpose of courts. When things in society are happening that are unfair or otherwise wrong, blaming the courts is like blaming the CPU instead of the programmer. In the US, the "programmer" is congress (the legislative branch). They write the code. The courts in this analogy are the CPU. Their job is to run the code as written correctly and consistently. If the outcomes aren't satisfactory, it's either a bug, missing feature or unhandled exception in the code. The Supreme Court's primary job is to fix system bugs at the micro-code and kernel levels, stuff like scope violations, etc, when the system runs correct code improperly. It's very rare for the issue behind "bad or unexpected outcomes" to be due to the micro-code or kernel but it can happen. Those rare times are when you call the Supremes. When the Supremes pass on accepting a case without comment, it's like rejecting a bug report, often due to it being a bug in the application-level code. In those cases passing is like responding "Not our Bug." Other times they are basically saying the issue is due to a program using system-level APIs in undefined ways. From their perspective, the system responding to ill-defined or undefined instructions with unexpected or inconsistent results is actually correct, so they respond with "Won't Fix (GiGO)". No one wants the CPU making up how to correctly respond to undefined instructions on its own. This is why the phrase "Courts don't make they law, they apply the law" is such a mantra. In this case, congress hasn't yet written any code designed to directly address this use case. If we want to "fix" things we need to get the feature approved and on the legislative backlog to be addressed in a future sprint.
- riwsky 3y ago
  This idealism ignores decades of the Supreme Court acting as a shadow legislature on topics as broad as environmental protections and sexual freedom. Roe v Wade, and decades later Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are not matters of microcode.

mrandish 3y ago

I agree that SCOTUS passing is correct and with everything else in your first paragraph as to why. Addressing the issue would certainly be the job of the legislative branch but I question whether they should try to address this with a law. My feelings on this are a bit conflicted because I truly hate "Jailed Gardens" and wish they didn't exist. However, I also know that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draft legislation that responds to dynamic, rapidly evolving problems in open-ended domains like high tech. It almost always ends up being ineffective, subverted or causing unintended consequences downstream. As much as I hate it, in areas of governance often the only viable options are all non-optimal in various ways. In this case, I think the 'least bad' approach is to let Apple have their jailed garden and run it the way they want to (short of demonstrable anti-trust, of course). Personally, I opted out of Apple devices a long time ago for this very reason and use Android devices I can root and modify however I want. After all, some people like living in the iOS jailed garden and appreciate the benevolent dictator keeping them safe and making their decisions for them (or are at least willing to tolerate the costs for the benefits). For my part, this is just another of those things I really don't like but for which reflexively calling "Thar oughtta be a LAW!" would be ineffective or make things worse. The road to dystopias is paved with the good intentions of those trying to legislatively enforce idyllic utopias. It's annoying but maxing broad freedom to choose often requires tolerating the annoying behavior of others maxing their freedom to choose (including those selling time-shares in an idyllic garden-jail).

kelnos 3y ago

Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved". Even for a hugely important issue, they might decline to hear the case on those grounds, if they think the lower court got it right. For some types of hugely important issues, of course, they might choose to take the case anyway (even if just to affirm the lower courts ruling), in order to establish binding precedent over all federal circuit districts (and below).

xenadu02 3y ago
> Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved". This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar. The federal court view is that the courts cannot and should not be the venue to solve all problems. Congress should get off its lazy butt and legislate.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  >This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar. This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS)
  - xenadu02 3y ago
    >> "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved" > This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS) No I was correcting the idea that by passing on a case SCOTUS is blessing the lower court opinion. SCOTUS passes on cases where the justices might completely disagree with the lower court or appellate decision. They pass on cases they think are a huge injustice too.