World Cup Intermezzo: Reflections on Law, Football, Ethics, and Technology
In the wake of the 2006 World Cup finals, I blogged a bit about sport and institutional governance, trading thoughts with William Birdthistle, who was guest blogging at the VC. You can find my posts here and here, and from there you can follow the links back to his.
Then, as now, there was quite a bit of public gnashing of teeth over inept referees, missed calls, and misplaced discipline (red cards) of players. This time around, a blown call in Germany’s win over England has prompted renewed calls for some form of technology-enabled judging. Even Sepp Blatter, head honcho of FIFA, is now open to the possibility that a machine could be used to determined whether a ball has crossed the goal line.  One could argue that such a device should be reserved for use only when the Germans meet the English, or that England have had a taste of the medicine that helped them raise the Cup in 1966, or both.
Up on Capitol Hill, however, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan recently dealt a devastating if not fatal blow to the idea that adjudication is a “robotic” matter of right and wrong. By elevating the idea of judgment in judging, she has expanded the scope of the inquiry; the question — in sport as well as in law — is not only the behavior of the neutral, but the behavior of the players. Rather than revisit arguments about the role of the referee (or umpire, to borrow the metaphor used by now-Chief Justice John Roberts) in governance of an institution, this time I offer links to recent arguments about the role of the players:
Does a football (soccer) player have a duty to own up to his or her knowledge about the “right” outcome of a given play? Should the German goalkeeper, Neuer, have told the referee that Frank Lampard’s shot had crossed the line? Read More »World Cup Intermezzo: Reflections on Law, Football, Ethics, and Technology