Mid-Term Pt. 2 Logan Davis Sec. 8, Baseball and Philosophy

In this post, I would like to point out the theory that baseball umpires are like that of Supreme Court Justices. They enforce the rules laid out to them and continue to be hated for making such decisions. Just as it isn't the responsibility of the judicial branch of government to make the rules, it isn't the job of umpires to come up with new rules either. They simply just follow what has been given to them in the years past. So my question is this...What can supreme court justices learn about the ethical conduct of umpires. Well first, The Supreme Court, which has not adopted for itself any comprehensive code of ethical conduct like the ones that govern professional athletics (or for that matter lower court judges), is now surrounded with controversy over its lax approach to rules requiring justices to recuse themselves from real and perceived conflicts of interest. Although the judge-as-umpire analogy is flawed in some ways, the Court could certainly benefit from studying and embracing the code of conduct rules that professional umpires and referees follow. In other words, they should be ethical in not fraternizing with any piece of interest that could come back to play a role in their decisions. They should follow the ethical codes that umpires must follow such as not visiting teams and clubhouses. This insures fans that no umpire is pulling for a specific team. One example of the supreme court failing in this was back in March of 2004 when Justice Antonin Scalia refused to recuse himself from an important case dealing with public secrecy and the activities of Vice President Dick Cheney, a friend with whom he periodically dined and had recently joined on an overnight hunting expedition. "I do not believe my impartiality can be reasonably questioned," Justice Scalia wrote in explaining his decision. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined." So my point on ethics is that it isn't right for someone who is part of a group who has to govern to mingle with people who they may someday have to judge.