Will our great nieces and nephews think that our current notions of
privacy were quaint?

“Centre County Judge Bradley Lunsford, who handled the three other cases, cited free speech concerns Tuesday in signing new expungement orders, submitted by a newspaper lawyer, that rescinded an order on Friday. The new order did not require the newspapers to expunge information about the defendants, including news stories”.

The worrisome part of the story, to me, was that neither judge ever intended to restrict newspapers’ speech— *they just didn’t know what they were signing.* As the AP article says, ‘Kistler and Lunsford said judges typically don’t read the text of each order and assume the orders are consistent with law. The orders are “certainly not things that we, as judges … create. They’re created by lawyers,” Kistler said.’

I never realized that judges sign such orders without reading them in detail. I guess it makes sense — as a professor, I sign tons of documents (expense reports, time cards for TAs and graders, add/drop forms, etc) without carefully checking the details. Still, the worst thing that can happen if I screw up is that a student gets under- or overpaid…