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Justice John Paul Stevens, dead at 99, promoted the Internet revolution
Former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens died Tuesday at the age of 99. During Stevens' tenure on the high court, which stretched from 1975 to 2010, Stevens had a huge impact on legal issues affecting the technology sector. Tonight we're republishing a lightly edited version of our 2010 story that originally marked his retirement from the Supreme Court.
In April 2010, the Supreme Court's most senior justice, John Paul Stevens, announced his retirement. In the weeks that followed, hundreds of articles were written about his career and his legacy. While most articles focus on "hot button" issues such as flag burning, terrorism, and affirmative action, Stevens' tech policy record has largely been ignored.
When Justice Stevens joined the court, many of the technologies we now take for granted—the PC, packet-switched networks, home video recording—were in their infancy. During his 35-year tenure on the bench, Stevens penned decisions that laid the foundation for the tremendous innovations that followed in each of these areas.
For example, Stevens penned the 1978 decision that shielded the software industry from the patent system in its formative years. In 1984, Hollywood's effort to ban the VCR failed by just one Supreme Court vote; Stevens wrote the majority opinion. And in 1997, he wrote the majority opinion striking down the worst provisions of the Communications Decency Act and ensuring that the Internet would have robust First Amendment protections.
Indeed, Justice Stevens probably deserves more credit than any other justice for the innovations that occurred under his watch. And given how central those technologies have become to the American economy, Stevens' tech policy work may prove one of his most enduring legacies. In this feature, we review Justice Stevens' tech policy decisions and salute the justice who helped make possible DRM-free media devices, uncensored Internet connections, free software, and much more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:08PM
This is veering a bit off the main topic of the article, but you know, I had a lot more respect for Stevens until today. In reading about him in various articles, I came upon a reference to the fact that he was a noted proponent of the "Oxfordian theory" of Shakespearian authorship, i.e., that Shakespeare's works were written by the Earl of Oxford rather than Shakespeare. Stevens was even named Oxfordian of the Year [wordpress.com] a few years back.
While anything's possible, and there aren't a huge amount of documents from Shakespeare's lifetime, the methodology of the Oxfordian movement is a combination of snobbery ("No lowly son of a tradesman could possibly write stuff that good!") and conspiracy theory. In a remarkable irony, the whole theory was originally inspired by a man named Looney. (No, you can't make this stuff up.) Yet Stevens did an interview [wsj.com] with the Wall Street Journal claiming the truth of the Oxford theory had "evidence... beyond a reasonable doubt."
I'm sorry, but while I disagreed with some of Justice Stevens's opinions at times, and at times I even thought he contorted his arguments to reach conclusions that he wanted for personal reasons, I mostly thought he was a reasonable justice. But someone who could say the Oxford theory is not only good but "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not capable of evaluating evidence clearly and even lacks basic logic skills. To me, this gives insight into those moments when I've read his SCOTUS opinions in the past and noticed tortured logic.
I knew Scalia was a noted Oxfordian, but that didn't surprise me. He was capable of amazing insight, but also capable of incredible sophistry and contorted argument when he wanted to make things go his way. I'd almost imagine Scalia as an ironic Oxfordian -- either that, or he was taken in by his "high culture" pretentiousness and snobbery. But Stevens? I didn't realize he was so gullible. It makes me question his entire jurisprudence.