Umpires v. Judges

“Have you read Roe v. Wade?” Tim Tschida was saying to me. “It’s very clear.” ***

“What it says is very clear. And we’ve still been fighting for 25 or 30 years over what it means.”

But as President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, heads to the Senate this week for confirmation hearings, Mr. Tschida’s assertion that umpires are like judges is especially pertinent because the analogy most famously goes the other way around.

It is likely that in invoking the umpire metaphor, Chief Justice Roberts was consciously oversimplifying his judicial philosophy. *** The black robes represent the fact that justices are not supposed to act as individuals, he said. They are “supposed to be doing their best” to interpret the Constitution not according to their own preferences but by the rule of law, he said, leaving the question open as to whether that is possible. “That is the ideal,” he said.

Last week, the umpire Marty Foster called the Yankees’ Derek Jeter out on a steal of third, and though it appeared he was never tagged, Mr. Jeter said Mr. Foster explained that he didn’t need to be tagged to be called out because the ball beat him to the bag. Talk about judicial activism! An uproar arose over this, but in fact, if that’s what Mr. Foster said, he was simply — if unwisely — expressing aloud a generally unspoken umpire tenet that allows for some discretion on close plays to keep managers and fans, who can clearly see throws but not tags from the dugout or the stands, from causing a ruckus.

How embarrassing for Bruce Weber, Tim Tschida and NY Times. Bruce Weber has clearly not read Roe v. Wade, and doesn't even understand the debate over why it is an example of judical activism -- or even more, that it is very difficult to apply. Roe v. Wade is the poster child (so to speak) for why judicial activism is a poor mode of governance for a democracy -- the courts are not the most appropriate vehicle for making new laws.

Yet, after reading this article, one is left with the conclusion that judges MUST make law -- that's what they do -- and that it is silly to uphold a Solomonic ideal of the judge as an independent arbiter. The article concludes that the judge-umpire analogy is "unfair" - a great word for the fair-minded media. And this article will probably be cited by the cognoscenti in DC this week as they refer to it to show that "we don't want just umpires." And the media will probably think they are sounding as erudite as Bill Buckley when they screech, "But is it FAIR for our judges to be just umpires?" And it will sound great on Court TV and CNN to those who long ago stopped thinking for themselves -- like the writers and editors at NY Times.

Of course, in one sense you can't really blame the editors of NY Times and the rest of the media for pitching this fight as an even fight. They do not read the cases, and even the ABA has adopted a resolution supporting "the holding in Roe v. Wade -- whatever that holding was, or what's left of it. They want authoritarian statists for judges for the same reason the ABA does -- it transfers power to a black robed guy or gal that we can trust. Very sad, the desire to be ruled by a strongman reaching into the US.

OK, maybe it's not fair to say Tim Tschida should be embarrassed. He's an umpire; not a law student. He gets his understanding of Roe v. Wade from the media. But the NY Times, the media, the ABA, and those who know better should be embarrassed for continuing to promote this myth.

Apparantly the guy has never read Roe v. Wade. It contains language that clearly says "do it yourself" abortions, or those done by "root workers", are OK.

The Supreme Court literally legalized backalley abortions.

In baseball that would be like the situation you'd have if the umpires went off to have a snack while every player on both sides was issued a bat and told to "jus' go at it".

In the interest of reducing the number of duplicate threads we have to pull, we are asking that everyone use only published titles.

The title you created:

"NY Times tries a backhand way of supporting Sottomayor"

has been replaced with the title found above the article you linked.

Thanks.

Actually, the author does have one point. A lot of laws seem to be worded so vaguely or ambiguously as to invite judicial activism. Congress can’t pass the laws they want to pass, so they make laws that act as suggestions to activist judges. It’s a neat trick.

Honest judges would simply the void the laws as too vague or ambiguous to enforce, but the train carrying honest judges left the station a long time ago.

Congress can’t pass the laws they want to pass, so they make laws that act as suggestions to activist judges. It’s a neat trick.

Hadn't thought of that one before. Wonder how many times they've filled that particular hat trick?

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and its statutory clauses repealing 2A, 5A, and 14A rights for husbands a wife is mad at, would seem to be a case in point, particularly since Dr. Timothy Emerson (as I understand it) was sent down by SCOTUS to stand trial under the act, n/w/s the Federal District Court had found VAWA unconstitutional on its face and the Fifth Circuit had found the law sufficiently malodorous that they saw fit to sit on their decision for two years while waiting on the outcome of the 2004 presidential election (!), before sending it up to SCOTUS for a decision. Which SCOTUS didn't see fit to give, sending poor Emerson back down for trial under a new set of rules repugnant to American jurisprudence.

White male + female complainant + gun => Go directly to jail.

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