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Comment by woofyman | Hacker News Reader

Why is the average age of the Supreme Court justices relevant ?

How could a group with exceptionally sharp minds who have lived through 7 decades of intense technological and social change possibly have better perspectives than people who have lived through 2?

They all are EXTREMELY intelligent people! BUT the issues presented can be lost and then we are dependent on the staff of the justices who explain issues and then the bias of the people "educating" the justices have a HUGE influence on the justices.

Is it not the staff, but expert-witnesses? Of course the influence of the technical advisory is subjective, so is the judge's. Arguably, more subjectivity levels out the preciseness of the judgement, it's a compromise, but certainly not unwelcome, when jury is invited to weigh out bias with it's own necessarily biased opinion. You can't get that out of the equation, because ...

I agree, the ageism implied by the OP is rather disappointing. I'm relatively young (mid-30's), but the persistent implications that anyone over 40 is technical inept is rather infuriating.

Supreme court justices are (hopefully) legal experts, not technical experts. Having younger supreme court justices doesn't change that _at all_. I don't know of many lawyers that know what an API is.

Good question. It probably is not relevant. I presume it's predicated on the notion that olds are generally less tech savvy (and therefore less capable of fairly & reasonably adjudicating technology cases.)

Sarah Jeong has written thoughtfully on whether justices need be tech savvy: http://sarahjeong.net/2014/04/23/scotus-is-bad-at-computers-...

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