A Social Media Case Tests The High Court's Tech Chops

Justices aren’t known for their digital savvy, but they have their ways of getting up to speed

As the Supreme Court considered a California law on violent video games in its 2010-11 term, clerks for Justice Stephen Breyer, then 72, set up a large-screen television in his chambers and hooked it up to a game console. Then Justice Elena Kagan came over to play Grand Theft Auto. “There we were, killing everybody left and right,” Kagan said at a 2015 event at Harvard Law School, much to the audience’s amusement.

Breyer “thought that it was all really horrible, really just disgusting and repellent,” Kagan continued. “And I was like, ‘Next round! Next round!’ ” Their legal conclusions eventually matched their gut reactions: Kagan voted with the seven-member majority to strike down California’s law, which banned the sale of certain violent games to minors. Breyer dissented, citing studies that linked violent games to aggressive behavior, particularly among children.

Their gaming session highlighted a growing challenge in today’s legal landscape. As technology seeps into every walk of life, an increasing proportion of Supreme Court decisions require at least a basic literacy in subjects that may not come naturally to the aging members of an institution that’s still passing out souvenir quill pens to lawyers. All of the current members of the court are older than 50, and, as Kagan, now 62, has said, they’re “not necessarily the most technologically sophisticated people.”