A sampling of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's colorful use of hypothetical examples over the years:
Qanta Computer v. LG Electronics, a dispute over patent rights on computer chips, Jan. 16, 2008:
--Breyer: "Imagine that I want to buy some bicycle pedals, so I go to the bicycle shop. These are fabulous pedals. The inventor has licensed somebody to make them, and he sold them to the shop, make and sell them. He sold them to the shop. I go buy the pedals. I put it in my bicycle. I start pedaling down the road. Now, we don't want 19 patent inspectors chasing me or all of the other companies and there are many doctrines in the law designed to stop that."
--Carter Phillips, representing LG: "I don't have any problem with your hypothetical because it's not this case. ... The question is if you buy a pedal, can you then take that pedal that was designed for a bicycle, put it into a Stair Master."
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U.S. v. Rodriguez, when is a repeat offender subject to additional prison time under the federal Armed Career Criminals Act, Jan. 15, 2008:
--Breyer: "Suppose with your own children: I told you half an hour ago not to interrupt your sister when she is doing her homework. This is the second time you've done it. Wouldn't you, with your own child -- I would with mine -- think that the second time he did it was worse behavior than the first time? I just told him not to."
--Charles Rothfeld, representing the defendant: "It is a familiar example, your honor."
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KSR International v.
--Breyer: "Now to me, I grant you I'm not an expert, but it looks at about the same level as I have a sensor on my garage door at the lower hinge for when the car is coming in and out, and the raccoons are eating it. So I think of the brainstorm of putting it on the upper hinge, OK? Now I just think that how could I get a patent for that?"
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Gonzales v. Raich, whether state laws protect sick people who use marijuana for medical reasons from a federal ban on the drug, Nov. 29, 2004:
--Breyer: "You know, he grows heroin, cocaine, tomatoes that are going to have genomes in them that could, at some point, lead to tomato children that will eventually affect Boston. ... So you're going to get around all those examples by saying what?"
--Randy Barnett, representing sick clients who have been prescribed marijuana: "By saying that it's all going to depend on the regulatory scheme."
--Breyer: "So now what you're saying is, in a commerce clause case, what we're supposed to do is to start to look at the federal scheme and the state scheme and see, comparing the federal scheme and the state scheme, whether, given the state scheme, the federal scheme is really necessary to include this. That's a task, and I'm trying to make it as complicated as I can in my question."
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FCC v. NextWave Telecom Inc., whether bankrupt NextWave should be allowed to keep its wireless telephone licenses, Oct. 8, 2002:
--Breyer: "Obviously many of my colleagues don't agree with me, but I learned the second year of law school that when you have a text which says `all,' that there are often implied, not-written exceptions. All animals in the park. No animals in the park doesn't necessarily apply to a pet oyster, OK. And so ...
--Unidentified voice: "Well, it's not an animal."
--Breyer. "Thank you. An oyster in my course in biology is an animal, all right. Maybe in yours it was a rock, or a vegetable or a mineral. But regardless, you see my point, and my question, of course, is that since that's how I read statutes ... is that I find exceptions implicit in statutes where to fail to read that exception is to destroy the purpose of the statute, and is not backed by anything in respect to what the people who wrote it want."
