How does our newest United States Supreme Court justice read her Supreme Court briefs?

On a Kindle, she told C-SPAN in her first interview since joining the Court in August.

We’re not surprised, since we know that Kindles are easing workflow for doctors, actors and directors, elected officials, and even some lawyers of lesser distinction. Now more than ever with the Kindle wi-fi, it’s a snap to send a WORD, PDF, TXT, or RTF file of any memo, script, brief, or other document wirelessly to your Kindle via your special you@free.kindle.com email address and begin reading within seconds. And it’s free! (If you’re sending a PDF file to your Kindle, type convert in the subject line field and Amazon will convert it to a free-flowing Kindle document.) 

And once the new Justice is reading such a document, she can use her Kindle to highlight, bookmark, annotate, and look up references elsewhere just as she would within any Kindle book. (Speaking of which, I wonder what else she has on her Kindle? Grisham? Turow? Glenn Beck?)

Of course not all Supreme Court justices are the same, so I’m not going to say that I was surprised to learn that Kagan’s colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, reads his Supreme Court briefs on an iPad.

It’s not likely to be the last of their differences.

The interview will air on C-SPAN on Dec. 19, but here’s a link to Kagan’s Kindle minute.