From Josh Blackman’s blog (cleverly titled Josh Blackman’s Blog), we get Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments on the legal blogosphere in his testimony before the Appropriations Committee:

We have seen since Justice Breyer and I have been on our Court, a quiet revolution because of IT, information technology. We have a website we run it ourselves. We get 59 million hits a month. There is a study I have seen, I am somewhat skeptical of, we are 12th or 13th of any government agency, 179,000 page hits a day.

I used to read Supreme Court cases over the summer. I would wait for months or years for law review articles. Now there are blogs. There are law professors in specialized areas, information technology, antitrust, that have blogs, that within weeks, days, even hours, they comment on our cases.

Our case law is now part of arguments that attorneys make to distirct and circuit judges within hours after we decide cases.

This has been very efficient. There has been a sea change how accessible our cases are. The system works. It is a quiet revolution. It makes our courts very efficient and very effective.

Make sure you also read Josh’s comments (and watch the video of Kennedy’s testimony) at his blog (Josh Blackman’s Blog, in case you forgot the name), especially regarding Kennedy being the first to use the world “blog” in an opinion.