Edward Lane was fired from his job at an Alabama community college after testifying truthfully before a grand jury and at trial about corruption at the college. Lane sued saying he was let go in retaliation, but the lower courts, citing an earlier Supreme Court opinion, ruled against him. He was represented at the Court by lawyer Tejinder Singh, who I have to say was fun to draw.
On the other side of the argument were Alabama’s Attorney General, who’s drawing I never finished, and lawyer Mark Waggoner, who was at the lectern a bit longer.
You can read about it here.
Earlier, the Court heard arguments in a patent case, Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments. Biosig has a patent on a device used in exercise machines to measure heart rate. It’s basically a bar with incorporated electrodes that receive signals from contact with a person’s hands. Nautilus claims the patent is too vague, particularly in describing the placement of the electrodes.
Now comes Justice Breyer, “I’m a little confused here. Imagine there are two kinds of electrodes, a blue one and a green one, and you have a blue one and green one on left hand and a blue one and green one on right hand. . . you cannot let them touch . . . I got that. And suppose on your left hand you put the blue one here and the green one there. And in the right hand, you put the blue in here and the green in here. . . . Does it work or not?”
And so it goes for awhile until Justice Scalia interrupts, “Let the record show that [Justice Breyer] is holding his fingers in the air.”
Anyway, it’s all “insolubly ambiguous”.
