The judge as umpire is an apt metaphor. Both wear uniforms that set them apart. Both see to it that a set of rules are obeyed. Both make authoritative decisions — albeit one calls balls and strikes, the other can quite literally decide life or death.

Because this trope helps lawyers explain the law to the rest of us who are legally illiterate, they use it a lot. Brett Kavanaugh, in particular, employed the metaphor long before his nomination to the Supreme Court. Consider this excerpt from a speech that Kavanaugh gave at Catholic University in 2015: