Wednesday, January 27, 2010

And I thought he was an umpire...

Green Bag announces a new feature: "Supreme Court Sluggers" trading cards. Like baseball trading cards, each card will feature the image of a justice, with statistics and other details on the back. Through this project, Green Bag hopes to:
(a) to develop and share comparable measurements of the work of every member of the Supreme Court since 1789;
(b) to gradually expand and refine those measurements with an eye to making them as useful and interesting as possible;
(c) to create informative, entertaining, and unorthodox yet respectful portraits of the Justices by first-rate artists; and
(d) to present all of this material in a way that will be enjoyable for the producers, consumers, and subjects of the “Sluggers” cards.
The first card features Chief Justice John Roberts as a pitcher, even though in his confirmation hearings, he described the role of a judge as that of an umpire. This card includes an umpire, but he is in the background, eclipsed by the more prominent image of Roberts. Perhaps Roberts as pitcher explains his role in Citizens United v. FEC?