Today in Supreme Court History: January 2, 1923

1/2/1923: Justice Pierce Butler takes oath.

Justice Pierce Butler

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (decided January 2, 1952): defendant vomited out two capsules of (illegal) morphine at hospital after being force-fed an emetic. After police broke into his house and dragged him there. All this without a warrant. Yeah, Fourth Amendment violation. Capsules should have been suppressed, conviction vacated. No dissents.

Kiefer-Stewart Co. v. Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, 340 U.S. 211 (decided January 2, 1951): distillers' agreement to set prices above which wholesalers could not resell violated Sherman Act (overruled by Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 1984, to the extent that a parent corporation can't be said to conspire with its affiliate)

Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Ry. Co. v. Bohon, 200 U.S. 221 (decided January 2, 1906): wrongful death suit against railroad and its employee can't be split for the purposes of removing the suit against the railroad on basis of diversity; it's an inseparable controversy (one guesses that plaintifff's counsel added the employee as a defendant so that the case would stay in state court)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

As I understand, the Rochin decision came before the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule was applied to the states - so the majority applied a "shock the conscience" test which (for instance) Justice Black said was too vague.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks. I stand corrected! Frankfurter (whose analysis amounts to "evolving standards of decency", and actually mentions "cybernetics") holds that the defendant was deprived of Due Process. Sorry folks!

[Krayt]

Cybernetics in 1951? I had to look that up. I guess I never new the relation of cybernetics to its modern sci-fi and robot use, cyborgs, Cybermen, et al.

It describes a feedback loop to control things iteratively, hence its reference above, and precedes electronics as it was studied as applied to, among many other things, “in ecological, technological, biological, cognitive, and social systems”.

It comes from the same Greek root word as governor.

(My 2nd and 3rd) Use of the edit button would be cybernetics.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

I was surprised because Frankfurter was such an old fuddy-duddy and could hardly be expected to use such a word.

It was in use in relation to computers, though. "Cybernation: The Silent Conquest" was an influential book that came out in 1962. I used to have it (which shows how old I am).

[Jonathan Affleck]

In my ongoing war against discrimination by a social medium platform, I keep pointing out that Internet exceptionalism is a total crock. There is no Internet patent comparable in importance to the Morse or to the Bell patents of the 19th century. We are still expanding on ideas, which were introduced in the 1950s and in the 1960s. I point out the derivative nature of the World Wide Web in my petition for a writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Martillo v Twitter.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In my view (and I'm not alone in this) the 19th century was the most important century in history as far as technology. In 1800 we had no trains, no cars, no electricity, no lighting, no telephone. By 1900 we had all those, and we were about to have airplanes. All modern technology grows out of the inventions of the 19th century.

[John F. Carr]

I liked The Technology Trap (Princeton University Press 2019, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172798/the-technology-trap). It discusses the difference between the two industrial revolutions, the original in England and the second one mostly in America. The first was highly disruptive and gave us Marx, Engels, and Dickens. In the second a rising tide lifted all boats and we got the 20th century. You could leave school as a teenager and work in the factory and raise a family on your little suburban rectangle.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Some differences.

In the United States, we had a bloody Civil War caused in large part by our transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy. The U.K. did not have any such disruption, in fact no large disruptions all. Largely because they already had basically a democracy, they avoided the revolutions that exploded across the Continent in 1848. The mischief promised by Marx and Engels happened elsewhere. In fact the U.K. wisely insulated themselves from a socialist revolution by adopting some of their policies.

Also in the United States we could simply ignore problems of inequality. There was not a limited pie we all had to share; we could simply go westward, kill some Indians, and grab more land, land which was rich in resources. We were protected by ocean on both sides and neither Canada nor Mexico cared about invading us.

[John F. Carr]

The disruption I meant is the change in the labor market that prompted Engels to write The Condition of the Working Class in England. Skilled workers were replaced by machines and their children went to work in poor conditions in factories. Cities became polluted. It took a generation for the dark Satanic mills to improve the condition of the lower classes.

[Krayt]

I’ve been recommending for 15 years that doing something long done already in the real world, but on a computer, or over the Internet, is not inherently patentable (though certain clever implementations might be.)

"LOOK AT THE CLOUD!!!" on a diagram of some accounting software, itself just coding of accounting from long before Ebenezer Scrooge was born, should not be patented.

[Jonathan Affleck]

A claim whose limitations consist of:

• a long existing algorithm
• the implementation of the algorithm on a computer, on a web server, or on the cloud

and

---
fails the Alice/Mayo two-part test and will not be included an issued patent.

A serious problem remains because patent-eligibility doctrine is completely incoherent and is destroying the patent system. Numerous scholars have documented and 19th century intellectuals as diverse as Judge Story and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) correctly attributed the efflorescence of technology in the USA of the 19th century to the patent system. If the patent system is destroyed, we can all kiss US technological superiority goodbye.

[David Nieporent]

Which is just another reason your petition is frivolous and hopeless.

(Did you notice, by the way, that Medium — exactly as anyone intelligent knew, but as you, delusionally, did not — chose not to respond to your cert petition?)

[Frank Drackman]

Looks familiar, didn't he just die? (Ok 100 years ago or whenever)
Don't mean to Pick Nits, but this "Feature" is like if "Today in Baseball" (Imagine in Legendary Yankees Announcer Mel Allen's Voice)
"Today in Baseball, January 2, nothing happened, it's effin 6 weeks until Pitchers/Catchers Report"(Can't wait until Pitchers/Catchers Report)

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Has anyone tried to diagnose why clingers favor random capitalization?

Is it disaffected posing? Poor education? A gang signal flashed among culture war casualties? A lame whine against education, credentials, and better Americans (the "elite," with their fancypants standard English)?

[Frank Drackman]

It's because my Native tongue is German and our, I mean their capitalization rules are an effin Durcheinander (I'd tell you).
Besides, wasn't it Rod Sterling who said someone who could only spell a word one way lacked imagination?? (OK, wasn't him, Sci-Fy had a Twillight Zone marathon yesterday)
And I'll put my BS in Poultry Science (there's more to it than White/Dark) and M.D. up against your PE degree from East Dumbfuck State any day of the week,
"Klinger"
Oooh, what a burn, used your own epithet on you,

Hey Jerry, Big-10 ain't looking too good this bowl season (heck, they can't even count how many teams are in the Conference) think your Nittily Lions (HT Barry O) are gonna pull it out?

Frank