In response to a question from Senator Klobuchar about nominee John Roberts’s famous umpire analogy, Kagan says that of course the job of a judge is not robotic, particularly at the Supreme Court level. Now, it’s true that a robot can’t be a judge, but the job of a justice would actually be more easily done by a robot than the job of a trial judge. Asserting otherwise — and, in particular, asserting that, because justices handle more important and difficult cases than lower courts, they have to exercise more “judgment,” which is what Kagan was saying — suggests that she indeed sees a policymaking role for justices.