Chase Video Speeds Supreme Court Into Internet Age
A video clip posted next to an opinion this week on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Web site has launched the high court into the Internet Age. Hence, the video, which depicts the view from the dashboard during a high-speed police chase in suburban Atlanta, is probably of greater interest to lawyers as a barometer of future Supreme Court behavior than the opinion itself, which says the fleeing driver injured in the chase has no tort case.
David Post, a professor at Temple Law School in Philadelphia, predicts that more opinion innovation will follow – as it should, because in our increasingly computer-based society “limitations of the print technology make it impossible or very difficult to actually understand the legal issues,” writes the ABA Journal eReport.
He cites an earlier case in which the Supreme Court decided that rap group 2 Live Crew did not violate a copyright on a Roy Orbison tune by parodying his “Oh, Pretty Woman,” because the rap version fell within the fair use exception. The justices obviously had listened to both songs before deciding the case, and it would have helped those reading the opinion if audio clips of the songs were included, Post says.
