I love one of his quotes from that case:

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In one episode, Oracle's star lawyer... was arguing that Google copied the nine lines of rangeCheck code to accelerate development to gain faster entry into the mobile phone market.

Alsup told Boies, "I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America --how could you even make that kind of argument?"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57445082-94/judge-william-a...

Thank you for sharing that. It's now my favorite legal quote.

Never argue with Hacker Judge.

http://www.hvjmphotography.com/p954955302

Not quite a hacker judge but certainly the best qualified judge in the system to rule on programming matters.

Got to admire his willingness to learn and his ability to recognize when he needs to learn something before ruling.

Not quite a "hacker judge", but with a mathematics degree and programming experience, maybe "STEM judge"?

Not that we really need labels like that.

I hereby declare Judge Alsup the Patron Saint of Information Technology Law and move his name for immediate canonization by the secret council of hackers.

Not a 'hacker' judge. Ugh.

Wow, nice memory; I remember that case, but his name didn't register in the slightest while reading the article.

As for the result, it's nice to see. I'm hoping for more transparency, but if the past year hasn't kicked the government into gear I'm not sure what will (short of the courts, I suppose).

He also has a degree in math!

With his name on so many high profile cases recently, I'm hoping he'll make it into Supreme Court.

I definitely hope so. I detest the politicized appointment process for the supreme court, but if you're going to appoint them, appoint this one.

"Haskell". Huh.

And they say that the universe is random chaos!

I believe what you're referring to was dubbed[1] "nominative determinism" -- the idea that people feel a (statistically-detectable) attraction to careers befitting their name.

The most charitable thing you can say about it: it's not been disproven as of yet.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9664000/9664697....

> It's not been disproven as of yet.

Well, if you're committed to the idea that it must be true, I guess it hasn't been disproven... but it's been very, very severely discredited...

See e.g. http://andrewgelman.com/2014/01/10/look-whos-3-years-date-wh...

Why not? Why judges are not for the public to pick? This puzzles me a lot lately, there's no democracy where Judges are picked by the population, although it's one of the main 3 powers of the state which should be itself accountable.

The historical reason, as far as I can recall, is that it's an attempt to make the judiciary independent. If judges were elected, they'd have exactly the same biases as the other elected offices, which means they'd be a less effective check-and-balance system. That also leaves aside the many, many ways you can corrupt an elected official that cannot be used for an unelected official.

In most western democracies (and certainly in Westminster-style democracies, which I know best) the judges are bound by a certain set of rules that limit how activist they can be: specifically, a constitution. They're required to make findings of law, nor findings of morality, so they can't just manufacture law or destroy law as they see fit: they need a different law they can point to which overrules the one in question. Hence the US Constitution, which acts as the highest law in the land. A judge will always reference their decision, in the end, to an established law (or the constitution).

Conversely, elected officials are empowered to _make_ law. Less true in the US (where the constitution binds the hands of the legislature and executive), but very true in Westminster systems where parliament is the supreme authority.

Thanks for the hints.

Seperation of power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers), but even so they are picked indirectly by the public through politicians. As a european though I am pretty amazed by all the direct voting that is done in US - you can hardly drive through a town here without running into a plethora of posters for people campaigning for various offices. You could argue that this is good democracy but I just can't imagine how voters can make informed decisions when voting for all these various offices - that is if they even bother to vote.

For many jobs, you need a professional rather than a politician. Judges, public prosecutors, police chiefs, etc should not be political positions.

In NY city and state, many judges are elected. However, they are limited to members of the NY bar (min. 10 years practicing in NY). Primarily wanted to point out that "professional" and election-based are not mutually exclusive.

Source (PDF): http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/report/become_a_judge.pdf

It's an appearance of freedom, but really, many public office officials do whatever they like so long as no one is watching. Scaling oversight past Tragedy of the Commons apathy is a must have in American public politics. (Sounds obtuse bullshit to make another point but the literal meaning is also a point.)

- Many US judges are elected. Many (more) aren't.

- Judicial recall certainly imposes accountability, even on unelected judges. Election, in fact, doesn't impose accountability anywhere; only re-election would do that.

Just ask yourself this - do you really want the judges to be politicians too?

I believe he knew how to program, and said he knew other languages, but he learned Java specifically for the case.