Judges and umpires comparison - too close for comfort?

JUSTICE SHOULD BE BLIND - LIKE AN UMPIRE??

I thought the comparison of judges and umpires that was made during the height of the Sotamayor confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court was on the money. Most commentators and political pundits seemed to break down along party lines or political philosophy.

But as far as the criticisms both face, the temperament required to do the job properly and the differences in philosophy as to how the job is to be carried out, the comparisons works for me.

Never mind the second guessing from the peanut galleries that have never done the job before.

President Obama's articulated criteria for his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court is: "We need somebody who's got the heart to recognize -- the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

The Pittsburgh Steelers have won six Super Bowl titles, seven AFC championships and hosted 10 conference games. No other AFC or NFC team can match this record. By contrast, the Arizona Cardinals' last championship victory was in 1947 when they were based in Chicago. In anyone's book, this is a gross disparity. Should the referees have the empathy to understand what it's like to be a perennial loser and what would you think of a referee whose decisions were guided by his empathy? Suppose a referee, in the name of compensatory justice, stringently applied pass interference or roughing the passer violations against the Steelers and less stringently against the Cardinals. Or, would you support a referee who refused to make offensive pass interference calls because he thought it was a silly rule? You'd probably remind him that the league makes the rules, not referees.

I'm betting that most people would agree that football justice requires that referees apply the rules blindly and independent of the records or any other characteristic of the two teams. Moreover, I believe that most people would agree that referees should evenly apply the rules of the games even if they personally disagreed with some of the rules.

The relationship between Supreme Court justices and the U.S. Constitution should be identical to that of referees and football rules. The status of a person appearing before the court should have absolutely nothing to do with the rendering of decisions. That's why Lady Justice, often appearing on court buildings, is shown wearing a blindfold. It is to indicate that justice should be meted out impartially, regardless of identity, power or weakness.

~Walter Williams

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Sen. John Cornyn’s office released remarks the Texas Republican made this afternoon during his (usually) weekly press conference phone call. Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, discussed Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s announcement last week that he plans to retire from the court this summer and expressed his hope that President Obama will nominate to the court a replacement for Souter “who will apply the Constitution and laws as written by Congress, in a way that is consistent with what Congress intends. … We don’t need judges to be another policy-making branch of the government.”

Cornyn then echoed remarks made four years ago by Chief Justice John Roberts during his confirmation hearings: “We need judges who will call balls and strikes like an umpire,” Cornyn said, “and not somebody who makes up the rules of the game as they go along.”