Supreme Cyclists
Hearing that more and more members of our highest levels of government are bicyclists is encouraging. From the Associated Press, news that Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor is a bicyclist:
“She’s a very human person,” [Democrat Chuck] Schumer told reporters after their meeting. They talked New York, he said. “She’s a bicycle rider, I’m a bicycle rider. We talked a little bit about our favorite routes.”
Justice Stephen Breyer caught some attention back in the ’90s for crashing his bike. I don’t know if he’s still riding.
It will be good to have another counter to Antonin Scalia cycling-wise. The New York Times reported on Dolan v. City of Tigard [Oregon]; a 1994 land use case about a Portland suburb’s requirement for a hardware store to contribute right-of-way for a paved trail:
In today’s argument, only Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s strongest advocates of private property rights, appeared to find no gray area in the debate. He taunted the Tigard City Attorney, Timothy V. Ramis, for his assertion that the city could logically see a bike path as a partial solution to the increased traffic congestion caused by the expanded store.
“Do people go to a hardware store on a bike path?” Justice Scalia asked. “There are a lot bike paths in Washington, and I’ve never seen people carrying shopping bags.”
Mr. Ramis said that as long as a bike path network would take some people off the roads, “it doesn’t have to be the same people” who would make added automobile trips to the hardware store.
I thought back to that Scalia argument when reading Sotomayor’s now-famous speech that has caught her so much flack. As is usually the case in today’s media, the full context of her statement is not covered. One has to seek it out; forget about hearing it on the evening news.
In other writings I have noted comparisons between racial prejudices and “mode-ism” if you will. So please read the following Sotomayor quote in that context.
[T]o understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.
And if you’d like to see the path in question in the Tigard case, go here.
“Do people go to a hardware store on a bike path?” Justice Scalia asked. “There are a lot bike paths in Washington, and I’ve never seen people carrying shopping bags.”
Oh heck. Now you’ve found something I agree with Scalia on. I thought that was impossible. Dang Portland cyclists are driving me to the Libertarians!
Personally, I want judges that rule on law by the law. That is the best protection for cyclists. Property rights are not a cycling issue other than tangentially. If the city had the lack of sense to bring cycling into the runoff issue, Scalia had a cause to be irritated.
I often take my bike to the local Home Depot. I’ve never seen another bike there.
My point wasn’t that Scalia was wrong on the property rights aspect of the case (I think Tigard’s position was weak), but that he, like everyone, sees what he’s predisposed to see.
The average person sees a cyclist in the middle of the lane and thinks “Fool!”
St. Pete cyclist Kimberly Cooper was repeatedly cited and convicted for lane control some years ago by a judge who clearly ignored the full language of the lane positioning aspects of Florida’s bicycle statute. (I measured the lanes; they were 10-11 feet wide.)
Scalia never would have seen me using “shopping bags” if I’d lived and biked around DC. He’d have seen panniers. Would he have imagined there might have been groceries — or hardware — in those panniers?
“Would he have imagined there might have been groceries — or hardware — in those panniers?”
I think Scalia would think they were Taliban-cyclists.
But what I agree with him on is the vast over-estimation of the amount of utilitarian bicycle traffic trails will generate. Utilizing the State’s power of imminent domain for less than straight-forward reasons makes me just a little bit nervous. Perhaps it’s because I’m a Westerner.
I don’t like it when the State takes property for a highway off-ramp to access an insider’s property, either.