I hear you dude. Have always wanted to be a lawyer but life didn't work out that way to this point. I believe I am the smartest person in the room currently but don't tell my wife that.
You're right otherwise though. It should really have been as simple as "science shows it didn't happen, the end." Unfortunately we have to involve judges to question whether an evidently partial arbitrator can discipline an employee for doing nothing wrong.
Yeah, it seems so unlikely but if you read everything through that lens it makes it all very scary. I just keep telling myself that there's no way 3 appellate judges declined to prepare themselves at all for this case and they're simply being jerks to both sides because they enjoy it.
Agree on your final sentence.
I'm waiting to read the transcript, but it seems that the Judges were wrestling with the extent of the authority that the CBA gives the Commissioner. Based on the reports, it seems that they were struggling to find a reason that could have justified his decision to reject Brady's appeal. Phone? Possibility of Brady's involvement in the alleged deflation, even if there wasn't "overwhelming" evidence thereof? Something else?
It seems to me that they were trying to see whether there was enough in the League's case to outweigh the three points on which Berman overturned Goodell's decision: Notice, Pash, adequate access to pertinent information.
If I didn't come at this case as a strongly biased Patriots and Brady fan, I'd focus on the fact that the Commissioner is the employee of the Owners and therefore "evidently partial" by definition to what the Owners perceive as their interest.
I'd then consider that the players
gave an "evidently partial" Commissioner absurdly broad authority as part of a collective bargaining process (so absurd that Kessler wanted the players to strike rather than agree to it, but then we had the big ol' Jeff Saturday--Bob Kraft Bear Hug moment).
I'd then wonder why the hell any group of workers in their right mind would do something like that, but I would have to note that they had indeed done so.
It sounds to me like that's the dilemma with which the Judges were wrestling. So, in retrospect, there is nothing surprising in their questioning and it suggests that they cut right to the heart of the matter.
My gut is that Chin will ultimately join Katzmann in upholding Berman's decision, but he is clearly torn between his "roots" as a Labor advocate and the nonsense to which the Players agreed in the CBA.