Through the Ars lens: Looking at Justice Scalia’s opinions, dissents

(credit: Shawn)

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday, will go down in history as the backbone of the court's modern conservative wing. The Reagan-appointee's long tenure touched upon so many facets of life that intersection with the Ars worldview was inevitable.

When viewed through this lens, the 79-year-old justice's writings concerned cases involving Aereo, video gaming, GPS tracking, thermal imaging, drug dogs, Second Amendment rights, Obamacare, and DNA among a host of other topics. So as the remembrances and reflections continue to trickle out, here's a reminder of how Justice Scalia's opinions and dissents impacted the technologies and policies we keep an eye on at the Orbital HQ.

American Broadcasting v. Aereo: The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a 2014 decision that resulted in the shuttering of the over-the-air broadcast TV company Aereo. New York-based Aereo needed the broadcasters' permission to sell monthly subscriptions, the court ruled. The court sided with broadcasters who said that Aereo offering customers tiny antennas to transmit the signal was akin to a cable company. In dissent, Scalia wrote, "The Court manages to reach the opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their place an improvised standard ("looks-like-cable-TV") that will sow confusion for years to come."

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