Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

by Michael J. Sandel

The case went to the United States Supreme Court, where the justices found themselves wrestling with what seemed to one a silly question, at once beneath their dignity and beyond their expertise: “Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?”34 In fact, however, the case raised a question of justice in classic Aristotelian form: In order to decide whether Martin had a right to a golf cart, the Court had to determine the essential nature of the activity in question. Was walking the course essential to golf, or merely incidental? If, as the PGA claimed, walking was an essential aspect of the sport, then to let Martin ride in a cart would “fundamentally alter the nature” of the game. To resolve the question about rights, the court had to determine the telos, or essential nature, of the game. The Court ruled 7–2 that Martin had a right to use a golf cart. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, analyzed the history of golf and concluded that the use of carts was not inconsistent with the fundamental character of the game. “From early on, the essence of the game has been shot-making—using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”35 As for the claim that walking tests the physical stamina of golfers, Stevens cited testimony by a physiology professor who calculated that only about five hundred calories were expended in walking eighteen holes, “nutritionally less...