All You Need to Know About Judge Sotomayor, You Can Learn Through Sports....

As a HR pro and a US citizen, the nomination of Supreme Court justices gets my attention.  After all, there's no position with more King-like authority in America than a nominated-for-life judge, and to a lessor extent, an elected judge.  It's one of the reasons that, as a moderate republican with a wife who's a career prosecutor, I usually like to study up even on the elected judge positions in my district under the assumption that I'm open minded.

Then I remember all the stories my wife has relayed to me regarding liberal judges.  And as a result, I pull the republican lever.

Film at eleven. 

With that in mind, the nomination of Sotomayor by President Obama is notable.  As it turns out, all you need to know about the nominee you can learn from sports.  From the Nation:

"It was Sotomayor who in 1995 briskly and gruffly ruled against the owners of Major League Baseball, quashing the lockout that infamously canceled the last one-third of the 1994 baseball season, including the World Series. Depression and two world wars couldn't cancel the series, but a particularly seething group of billionaires were ready to do just that, all for the almighty purpose of snapping the spine of a baseball players' union that had cleaned their clock for a generation. The bosses were ready to destroy the game in order to save it, fielding replacement players and doing everything short of lacing hot dogs with rat poison. But Sotomayor stepped in, put the owners on ice and the game back on the field.

At the time, baseball writers went canine in full-throated praise. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Claude Lewis opined that Sotomayor would be mentioned in baseball lore, in the same breath as Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams. Barack Obama even mentioned this fact in his press conference announcing her nomination, saying she had " saved baseball." Her decision was pitched as a pro-union response to the owners, saying that they had "placed the entire concept of collective bargaining on trial."

Obama's casual reference to Sotomayor's judicial fastball was enough to set off tweedy baseball weenie George Will. Will, who from appearances probably never got to play as a child, huffed, "in fact, what she did was take sides, took union's side against the management, and in so-doing, wasted 262 days of negotiations. That, far from saving baseball, consigned baseball to seven more years of an unreformed economic system, which happened to be the seven worst years in terms of competitive balance." This is a reference to the Yankees' winning four titles from 1996-2000, which clearly had more to do with a court ruling than anything done by Derek Jeter.

Sotomayor, Will says, "delayed the restructuring of baseball. So I would say that far from her saving baseball, as the president says, that in fact, baseball thrives now because we got over the damage that her judicial activism did in that strike."

ESPN's Peter Gammons has a smarter take:

She didn't necessarily save baseball; she saved the owners from themselves. The people who tried to rig the system with collusion, pay-for-performance and the artificial attempt to implement their own labor system were, as usual, ill-advised and leaderless. When Sotomayor forced the game to resume and charged that they bargain in real faith, baseball under Selig went from a $1.3 billion to $7.5 billion business.

So whether Sotomayor's decision was good for baseball depends on what side you're on. But this wasn't the only time the judge made a controversial mark on sports. She also "saved" the National Football League from having to pay players before their time. In 2004, Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that ruled against Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett in his effort to overturn the NFL's draft-eligibility rules. The NFL's bylaws state that prospective players have to wait three years after high school before trying out for the NFL.

On appeal, it was Sotomayor ruling with the majority that sided with business as usual in the NFL. Once again she was brisk and ostensibly pro-union, saying that the NFL Players Association, which was standing arm in arm with the owners in the suit, had every right to restrict who could play.

"Those 1,500 players want to protect themselves," she ruled. "That's what unions do; they protect people in the union from people not in the union." Why is this case different?

Note the very instructive common thread in the 1995 baseball case and the Clarett case. In both, Sotomayor makes strong statements for union rights--that the baseball owners are challenging collective bargaining and that the NFL players' union has the right to restrict who plays. In both cases she is faithfully serving the interests of money and power. Sotomayor is a Yankees fan, which should just be a dead giveaway. Left-wing in theory, right-wing in practice--no wonder she clicked so smoothly with the current administration."

"That's what unions do, they protect people in the union from people not in the union".

Oh, OK.  Now I get it.  Thanks. 

Comments

[Michael D. Haberman, SPHR]

Are we really surprised? Hilda Solis heads DOL and she is a union activist/apologist/protectionist. Why wouldn't Obama's nominee for judge be the same? Since Newsweek has declard him a GOD he should be appointing people made in his image.