The Umpire, the Wise Latina, and the Cabinetmaker
The confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor are over, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly negative. The public tuned in expecting a discussion of the nominee’s qualifications and a debate on the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system. What they got, instead, was a battle of metaphors.
Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee compared the ideal Supreme Court justice to a baseball umpire. An umpire confines himself to calling balls and strikes without allowing his preference for one team or the other to influence the performance of his duties. The umpire metaphor is designed to support the view that judges apply the law objectively and even handedly.
While the umpire metaphor expresses a commendable aspiration, one can’t help but wonder whether this is an attainable goal.
Many attorneys representing domestic clients extend their legal advice to foreign and international matters. Unfortunately, some of these attorneys are ill-prepared to provide this advice. Not only are they not familiar with the basic operation of other legal systems, such as those derived from the Civil Law tradition, they are unfamiliar even with the Common Law systems that vary from the U.S.
We are used to the Recording Industry Association of America aggressively litigating against individuals and organizations, trying to impede copyright infringements of musical works through peer-to-peer networks and/or other file-sharing technologies. The original Napster was converted to a pay-based music subscription service years ago and, more recently, Kazaa did the same.