Though there were rumblings from the Republican camp, the constitutional right of the president to sign a bill with the autopen has neither been challenged nor tested in court. The constitutionality of a proxy signature has most certainly been challenged, with some legal experts asserting that the problem is not the use of a proxy, but that the principal (in this case, the president) and the proxy (the autopen) are not together at the time of signing.
The three hundred-fifty-year-old proxy law, designed to mitigate fraud or undue influence, has surprising relevance to this new technology. The presidential use of the autopen, or new technology, then, is not only an esoteric interest of collectors, but has very real applications and ramifications that impact the very notion of a well-ordered government.