Shirey Seigworth

Prof. Baumann
PL SC 001
March 22, 2014
Judiciary Essay
The Supreme Court does not simply call balls and strikes and justices are not neutral,
umpire like figures. In baseball umpires, and referees in the other sports are supposed to be
entirely neutral parties that are simply calling it like they see it. In baseball, the throw was either
a ball or strike and their personal preferences are not supposed to get in the way of their
calls. There are two primary ways of interpreting the Constitution. The first way, and how most
conservatives interpret the Constitution, is with original intent. They prefer to interpret the
Constitution by using the words on the page and the original intent of the framers. The second
way, and how most liberals interpret the Constitution, is a more modern and loose interpretation
of the Constitution. They prefer to decide if something is constitutional based on if it is
necessary today since the framers could not anticipate every law needed far in the future. With
this said, Supreme Court decisions are not cut and dry nor black and white such as how calling
balls and strikes is supposed to be. The Supreme Court today is made up of judges that are
conservative, liberal, and somewhere in between. It is impossible for there to be little to no
personally biased influence when deciding on the constitutionality of something because of the
different ways to interpret the Constitution.
The presidential appointments of justices has a big impact on the Supreme
Court. Presidents appoint people who have similar views to theirs and who they believe will rule
how they would want. Because justices have are appointed for life or until retirement, they have
a lasting impact on the rulings long after the president that appointed them is out of office. This
impact can be seen throughout history. At times when the Supreme Court was quite liberal after
many liberal presidents made appointments, rulings tended to be more liberal such as during the
1950s when Brown v. Board was decided and even the court in the 1970s that had 6 conservative
judges that ruled on Roe v. Wade (Ewers, 2008). Today, the Supreme Court has 7 justices
appointed by Republican presidents and make up four of the five most conservative justices since
1937 (Ewers, 2008). When the court leans more liberally, many of the rulings determine things
as constitutional when the Constitution does not make any mention of the topics. The
Constitution does not mention abortion, gay rights, privacy, health care, etc. but they are all
things that have been ruled as constitutional. It is not calling balls and strikes when one is
making really loose interpretations based on their own personal ideologies. With topics such as
these, it is nearly impossible not to have a personal opinion (especially as a highly educated
justice) and even harder to not let that personal opinion effect your ruling. It is not hard to justify
a loose interpretation by citing the implied privacy rights in the 14
th
amendment/ Due Process
Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. This is not to say that liberal rulings are not
beneficial to society or wrong but there is not a lot of evidence supporting the assertion that
Supreme Court rulings are 100% black and white.
The fact that the Supreme Court gets to decide what cases it hears takes away from the
argument that justices are like umpires. They are somewhat manipulating the fairness of the
judicial process by choosing cases based on their personal preferences. It is not fair that
potentially valid and deserving cases are not heard because 4 justices did not agree that it was
worthy because of their ideologies and limited case selection. In the MLB (at least), an umpire
cannot chose to work a Yankees game because he likes the Yankees. The process of selecting
cases to hear is not cut and dry. Justices choose cases that they think represent a common
problem they see or a case that represents a common disagreement between lower level
courts. With this in mind, there are similar cases and they make a potentially unfair choice of
picking one over others because of certain characteristics of the case. The selection process is
not unambiguous and that in itself decreases the neutrality. A similar argument can be made for
as to why there are frequent 5-4 decisions. It is not unambiguous and therefore it is not as
neutral as calling balls and strikes. If an umpire makes a bad call (in an important game that
potentially changed the outcome) or a series of bad calls they will likely be fired. Justices serve
on the bench for life and no one has ever been successfully been removed. The 5-4 decisions
show how personal ideologies clearly get in the way of decisions, otherwise voting would be 9-0
more frequently than 5-4 or even 6-3.










References
Ewers, J. (2008, May 12). Ranking the politics of Supreme Court justices. Retrieved March 23,
2014, from U.S. News website:
http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/12/ranking-the-politics-of-
supreme-court-justices