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Sports Labor Law

This might provide a nice short break for anyone who is now studying for the bar but finding it impossible to stop thinking about law--even while taking a break to watch baseball highlights.

David Cone testified at Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings last week (transcript here) and he also happened to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium yesterday (a still-devastating curve). Cone was invited to testify on Sotomayor's behalf because he was a representative of the Major League Baseball Players Association when Sotomayor resolved baseball's most recent major labor dispute, in 1994. Here, Prof. Ilya Somin from George Mason, who also testified Thursday, mentions that Cone was a successful litigant who was testifying on behalf of a judge who made a decision in his favor.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently granted cert. in American Needle v. National Football League, which could significantly change labor relations in American professional sports, and some see Sotomayor as a potential disruption to the NFL's apparent plan to obtain antitrust exemption for all major sports leagues through that case. (Good analysis of the case is here from a practical perspective, and here from a legal perspective.)

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Full post as published by Virtual Library Cat's Eye View on July 19, 2009 (boomark / email).