The Supreme Court live-streamed its first phone hearing,and (almost) everything worked

Yesterday morning, the Supreme Court heard its first remote oral argument and streamed the event live online for the first time. The case was Patent & Trademark Office v. Booking.com, an intellectual property dispute that’s potentially important but not very flashy. But it was one of a handful of cases rescheduled for May after being indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and it was a largely successful trial-run for a (relatively) high-tech experiment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor may have briefly forgotten to unmute her phone at one point during the hearing. Justice Stephen Breyer’s connection seemingly faltered for a few seconds, turning part of one question into a garbled mess. For most of an hour-plus debate over...

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