Stephen Breyer, The Supreme Court's King of Hypotheticals

As every lawyer knows, hypotheticals are the bread and butter of legal discourse. But Associate Justice Stephen Breyer has taken the practice to the next level in his nearly three decades on the Court by injecting wild, sometimes bizarre scenarios into his questions at oral arguments. In this video, Supreme Court reporter Kimberly Robinson takes a look at some of Justice Breyer's greatest hits. (Produced by Andrew Satter; Illustrations & Motion Design by Virginia Gilles; Executive Producer: Josh Block)

[@ovenlovesyou]

I wish more context was given here about the hypotheticals. They probably make a lot of sense in context.

[@DekeDieken]

Think of a hypothetical, in most of these instances as a justice trying to get an advocate to back away from a legal position they are taking that would lead to absurd results. Like my best guesses here for what the underlying question is for the Raccon and the Pharoah? How simple does an improvement have to be before it doesn't deserve the limited-term government-sponsored monopoly that is a patent? The Rabbit or a duck/Jackelope one? Breyer is probably trying to make the point, that when something is undefinable from the inside, sometimes you just have to look at it from the outside to determine what category it is in (and therefore how the law should treat it)...and the famously textual Scalia is probably trying to say it's neither, and therefore i would like to make a new rule based on my view of the world and my political leanings.

[@jayyubhai]

I wish someone makes one of these for an Indian Supreme Court Justice.

[@DekeDieken]

I beg of you, MORE!

[@7MikeM7]

Now I understand where the hell The Shins got their inspiration for their song lyrics…Stephen Breyer’s hypotheticals.

[@nancyhewitt858]

The surpreme court always fines a reason to not hear a case. Now that he's a private citizen why didn't they make a decision about that?

[@leandroramirez6879]

Sounds like Joe Biden on a daily.

[@georl1]

Personally, I think there should be an equal amount of Justices on the Supreme Court, meaning an equal amount of Liberals and Conservatives. When a case comes before the Court, then the Justices would have to draw straws, or rocks, or marbles or something to hear that case but it would have to be an even number of Justices that would preside over the case. So no one would know in advance who would preside on each case. On some cases you'd have Conservatives be the majority and on other cases, you'd have Liberals be the majority. Then I think you'd have the fairest court.

[@kenmacfarlane8744]

Imagine a Lawyer not talking shite ....... not easy is it ?

[@shadowlouise]

Paging Dr. Lee. Duty2Warn, Are you listening to this?