"Written During The Kavanaugh Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings"

Here’s the thing.  

Which I assert with neither professional knowledge nor training, or individualized personal study, even.  When you write a blog, you get a certificate that says, “You don’t have to know anything. Just write.”  So that’s what I’m doing.  While harboring an outside chance of tripping over a reasonable perspective. Or at least one you won’t haughtily dismiss.  

Hopefully.  (And by the way, who made you so haughty?)

Two recent nominees for Supreme Court appointments, first, Chief Justice Roberts (during his confirmation hearing in 2005) and now Brett Kavanaugh, have compared being a judge to being a baseball umpire.  Their decisions are not personal.  They simply call the judicial version of “balls and strikes”, following accepted codified instructions.

Interrupting Note: There has been serious talk about doing away with home plate umpires and have balls and strikes called by replacing computers.  Following the aforementioned analogy, does that mean computers will soon be occupying the bench?  

“All rise for the Apple iJudge 11!” 

Just asking…

Anyway,

Assailing the (self-servingly – there it is again – inaccurate) comparison of judges to umpires, Erwin Chemerinsky, distinguished Dean of the Berkeley Law School op-eds,

“… justices are not umpires at all.  Umpires apply rules and have little leeway in determining how those rules should be interpreted.  The Supreme Court {on the other hand} creates the rules and justices have enormous discretion in how they interpret the law.”

Chemerinsky goes on – at unnecessary length, which I shall prove with condensing brevity – to explain that “the Constitution was written – intentionally – in broad open-ended language…” requiring determining interpretations on disputed issues presented to the court, many of which were not foreseeable in the 18^thCentury.  (When the Constitution was written. But you probably knew that already.)

Examples are offered demonstrating how different Justices regularly adhere to contrasting “readings” of Constitutional pronouncements, like for example, the issue of whether limiting campaign contributions is an infringement on “Free Speech”, or whether the Second Amendment about gun ownership involves individuals or militias.  (Even though the word “militia” is specifically mentioned in the amendment, causing some people to immediately stop typing, slapping their foreheads with the palm of their hands.  I mean, how much clearer can it be?) 

Chemerinsky’s blanketing contention is that “How a justice votes is very much a result of his or her ideologies and views…”

Which is where me and Dean Erwin part company.

In terms of “primary focus.”

Chemerinsky’s summarizing point is, “Don’t say ‘umpire” because it creates…

“…a misleading sense of constitutional law to the Senate Judiciary Committee {and} the American people.”

Okay, fine.  But, to me, that’s small potatoes.

A guy angling for a job on the Supreme Court proclaims his impartiality, promising he will assiduously “follow the rules.” Chemerinsky, however, says that never happens.  Judges, he authoritatively asserts, make their decisions, thumbs-on-the-scalesedly influenced by “his or her ideologies and views.” 

So tell me, what’s more important?

A fawning job applicant applying a faulty analogy?  Or a Justice with a clear ideological record voting exactly the way you expect them to vote, filling the august body with biased ideologues whose final decisions depend entirely – at least nowadays – on the court’s “liberal-conservative” balance at the time?

I mean, come on.  On the cases that matter, how many votes are an actual surprise?

Sitting Justices I’ve seen interviewed adamantly insist the Supreme Court is not “political.”  Tell me, what exactly is making decisions based on “personal ideologies and views”? (By judges appointed by “political” presidents, expressly because of their personal ideologies and views) 

Yes, nominee Kavanaugh is misleading about “umpire.”

But the Supreme Court is misleading its head off about “impartial.”

Me and Erwin have similar concerns about distorting reality.

It’s just, 

My issue is bigger.