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Comment by marincounty | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> The Supreme Court makes decisions in Bioscience; I think they can handle stuff on technology?

Some of their decisions in biology are equally suspicious. For example, should genes, proteins, or DNA be patentable? That one has gone to the Supreme Court on occasion. But patenting human genetics can lead to crazy scenarios like "suddenly the entire human population in the United States is violating Monsanto's patent", which is patently absurd. Of course, I am purposefully exaggerating and twisting some of the arguments, but you can see how the courts can get biology just as wrong as any other technology.

On a related and amusing note: In March 2000, President Clinton announced that the genome sequence could not be patented, and should be made freely available to all researchers. The statement sent Celera's stock plummeting and dragged down the biotechnology-heavy Nasdaq. The biotechnology sector lost about $50 billion in market capitalization in two days. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project

The court is still very political. I can't even begin to talk about Monsanto--they are horrid. I remember having a botany professor at Sonoma State university who would literally shake when everever he started to talk about how evil Monsanto is--that was years ago.

My point is Not that the court has flaws. It does--that's why the appointment of Supreme Court Justices is so dam important. Enen then, I've noticed justices change their views through out the years--so I'm glad they are there for life. Would I like to see Ph.D's in only the hard sciences a basic minimum as a requirement in order to be Supreme Court justices--Yes!

They're actually not that political, usually. They're immune to politics so that protects them a great deal from the pressures that can be brought to bear on other branches of government.

They also have historically had a completely different axis on which their decisions turn. Not left or right, but strict or flexible in their relationship to the constitution. It leads to some real surprises and people often interpret these in terms of political pressures but really the supreme court is the one set of people in government who care the least about pleasing some political masters.

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