What’s With the Hockey Parenthetical?

By Amy Howe
on May 22, 2006 at 4:25 pm

Law enforcement officers, like Supreme Court Justices, are more akin to baseball umpires than to hockey referees. So says the Chief Justice, anyway, who seems to have an affinity for sports similes. See the odd insertion in the penultimate paragraph of his opinion in Brigham City today. [Note to all you antepenultimatists out there: I’m not counting the disposition sentence-cum-paragraph.]

Ann Althouse asks: Why hockey? (Her readers offer answers in the Comments section.)

[UPDATE: In her update, Althouse also ponders why the Chief Justice all-of-a-sudden lapsed into a screenwriter’s present tense in the final sentence of this paragraph:

The officers were responding, at 3 o’clock in the morning, to complaints about a loud party. As they approached the house, they could hear from within “an altercation occurring, some kind of a fight.” App. 29. “It was loud and it was tumultuous.” Id., at 33. The officers heard “thumping and crashing” and people yelling “stop, stop” and “get off me.” Id., at 28, 29. As the trial court found, “it was obvious that … knocking on the front door” would have been futile. Id., at 92. The noise seemed to be coming from the back of the house; after looking in the front window and seeing nothing, the officers proceeded around back to investigate further. They found two juveniles drinking beer in the backyard. From there, they could see that a fracas was taking place inside the kitchen. A juvenile, fists clenched, was being held back by several adults. As the officers watch, he breaks free and strikes one of the adults in the face, sending the adult to the sink spitting blood.

Are these the Chief’s ways of giving we Court-watchers [sic: should be “us” — thanks, Ann!] something to talk about on a light decision day?]