SORT OF A REVERSE LANDIS:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor well known in sports (Ted Keith, 5/26/09, SI.com)

In March 1995, Sotomayor, then serving as a District Court judge, issued an injunction requested by the National Labor Relations Board ordering baseball owners to restore bidding on free agents, a resumption of salary arbitration and the anti-collusion rules which were a part of the collective bargaining agreement that had recently expired. As President Obama noted in his remarks introducing Sotomayor as his nominee, she deliberated for just 15 minutes before making a decision that, in the President's words, "saved baseball."

Replacement players were scheduled to begin the season two days after Sotomayor's ruling, but once she issued the injunction, the MLBPA voted to end the strike. When the owners didn't have the votes necessary to lockout the players, the major league players returned to their teams. Spring training camps opened shortly thereafter and Opening Day was played in late April, the beginning of an abbreviated 144-game season.

To the owners, Sotomayor's ruling was, according to one replacement player, "a fastball under the chin and their knees buckled."