In response to my homepage article, A. K. writes in:

I very much enjoyed your piece defending Roberts’ umpire analogy. You understand the role of the courts far better than most Supreme Court clerks, let alone most attorneys! I write with a minor suggestion that I hope you will appreciate. When a federal court concludes that a law is unconstitutional, I’d urge you not to characterize the court’s judgment as “striking down” the law. Federal courts don’t “strike down” laws. Article III doesn’t entrust judges with a red correction pen to cross out constitutionally offensive provisions in the United States Code. When they have jurisdiction, courts issue judgments in cases or controversies. In the course of resolving a particular case between particular parties, a court may conclude that a statute is inconsistent with the Constitution, and that conclusion may effect the relief the court issues. But what it decidedly does not do is excise the allegedly unconstitutional statute from the books. Nor does it impel Congress to repeal the law in question or require the President to stop enforcing it (save as applied to the particular litigant who benefited from the court’s ruling). Mine may seem a minor nit, but ceding that judges are empowered to “strike down” laws tacitly buys into the all-too-common conception of judicial supremacy that liberals peddle. Because I know you respect the separation of powers, I’d think you would not want to reinforce those false notions.

Reader E. C. G. writes:

“The other is that the judge must try to discern the truth of the case; he does not create it.” The simplicity of the above statement appears to ungraciously dismiss decades/centuries/millenia of writing and philosophy regarding truth, interpretation, and how people construct reality.

I will concede that Roberts’s point, which I endorse, is incompatible with certain philosophical views about truth.