HURLING REFEREES AS JUDGES

There is a history of contrasting judges to sporting officials in legal jurisprudential writings. In drawing similarities between the roles during his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Roberts brought the comparison centre-stage when he used the analogy, 'judges are like umpires'. The suitability of Roberts's comparison was questioned by Richard Posner, who reversed the analogy and used it to distinguish between his categories of judicial decision-making. Posner employed empirical evidence from American legal, rather than sporting, arenas to classify American judges. This article seeks to add empirical evidence from the sporting side of the analogy. Using data from the sport of hurling, the article suggests that hurling referees are similar to Posner's constrained pragmatists and that line officials in hurling might be closer to what Roberts had in mind.