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President Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court.
If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, Judge Sotomayor, 54, would replace Justice David H. Souter to become the second woman on the court and only the third female justice in the history of the Supreme Court. She also would be the first Hispanic justice to serve on the Supreme Court.
Conservative groups reacted with sharp criticism on Tuesday morning. “Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network…
Judge Sotomayor has sat for the last 11 years on the federal appeals bench in Manhattan. As the top federal appeals court in the nation’s commercial center, the court is known in particular for its expertise in corporate and securities law. For six years before that, she was a federal district judge in New York…
Born in the Bronx on June 23, 1954, she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8. Her father, a factory worker, died a year later. Her mother, a nurse at a methadone clinic, raised her daughter and a younger son on a modest salary.
Judge Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude in 1976 and and attended Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She spent five years as a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office before entering private practice.
But she longed to return to public service, she said, inspired by the “Perry Mason” series she watched as a child. In 1992, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended the politically centrist lawyer to President George H. W. Bush.
It’s not out of line that a traditional conservative Republican appointed her. Her life is a Horatio Alger story – the sort that inspired generations of Americans to aspire for a better life.
Previously approved by two bi-partisan efforts in Congress, no doubt the Party of “NO” will waste a couple of months on preaching their ideology, trying to stop her appointment to the bench.
#102 Bobbo
Your witless response is an excellent example of how lacking your intellectual capabilities really are.
If you had chosen instead, to call me an ignorant slut and perhaps slip in my middle name, Jane, we might have found some common ground for discussion.
As it is, I find you and your retort far too common to expend any further effort.
#121, Rick,
That is what happens when you’re 23 cents short of a quarter. Sad, isn’t it. Are you friends with Patrick? He has the same problem.
Wretched,
I read it here:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_10-2009_05_16.shtml#1242399411
Maybe you need to read it, since you mischaracterize her comments somewhat. She does not limit the impact of her race and gender to certain issues.
But even if she did, in polite society it is considered vile to base ANY decision, especially one that is backed by authority or power (as in the decisions of a judge or of an employer making a hiring, firing, or promoting decision) on race or gender bias. It is considered vile to assert racial or gender superiority, especially to assert superior suitability for or ability to wield authority or power.
These are simple ideas. I don’t know how much more clearly I can state them. She’s just not someone I want on the Court.
I do expect her to be confirmed, and I don’t think the republic will crumble as a result. But I don’t like her. She stands for some ugly and old-fashioned identity politics.
#122, Mr.Fusion.
Friends with Patrick? – Don’t know yet. 1st time caller, long time listener…so to speak.
#116, Cow-Patty,
So it matters if the Judge is a latino woman, but it doesn’t matter if a rich white judge follows his catholic teachings like Kennedy and especially Scalia do? (and I might add we expect Alito too) Or how about when Thomas ruled in Michigan and several other discrimination cases.
You’re still a troll.
#98 – bobbo,
#97–Scott==your links don’t support your concerns at all. Dismissing a case for lack of standing tells you NOTHING about the “political leanings” of a judge.
Actually, I think my links pointing to the only information that exists either way about her leanings on both choice and church and state support my concerns perfectly. I did not state that she was either anti-choice or against the separation of church and state. I stated only that I felt there is reason for concern.
You demonstrate what is so wrong in “evaluating” a judge as liberal or conservative. Unless you argue the issue from the perspective of the actual issues/laws/arguments/facts before the judge in the given case under review, you say (again) NOTHING about the judge’s personal bias.
I am not on the committee evaluating her. I am merely stating my own personal opinion that there is insufficient evidence to be sure that she is indeed liberal. Given the current make-up of the supremes, which I view as radically right wing, I am genuinely worried that she may be the key to a couple of my key issues that may come before the court in her lifetime.
Your posts validity is on a par with criticizing her for “not being intelligent.”
Please. Give me a bit more credit than that. Did I not say, “She is certainly well qualified with an excellent education”?
I also did not assert that she is not liberal. I just stated my personal fear that she may be an unpleasant surprise.
#99 – Mr. Fusion,
#97, Scott,
I would think she is following the law as defined in previous decisions and statute.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon which side you support, we can’t have our Judges following their instincts or emotions all the time. If rulings follow precedent to our horror, then it is time for us to modify the statutes or even the Constitution.
At least regarding religious displays on public property, I think we have a clear violation of the constitution. That we likely have a great many such displays and long precedent for this, as well as opposing precedent in cases such as the ten commandments display in front of a courthouse that was removed, does not change the fact that all such displays are patently unconstitutional.
As a supreme court justice, I hope she makes better judgments.
#127, Scott,
I’m not going to research this but as I recall the difference is in the case she ruled on, it was a menorah erected by a Jewish group. As the local town also allowed other groups to erect temporary symbols there was no violation.
We have come a very long way in removing religious symbols erected by our governments. I, for one, have no problem if religious groups are permitted temporary displays of their faith during especially moving or important times in their faith. I see no reason to prevent them from celebrating in their manner than I would for (solely as an example) disapproving of Greek immigrants having a Greek celebration complete with the Greek flag in a public park.
Please note the use of the word “temporary” above. The Ten Commandments were removed because they were permanent monuments. I also like to think there was supposed to be 15 too.
Eugene Volokh, Professor, UCLA Law School:
“Wise Latina” speech: troubling
A judge’s life experiences doubtless affect the discretionary decisions she makes – decisions about sentencing, witness credibility, common law development, interpretation of ambiguous historical sources, and other areas where the law or the facts do not point to one clear decision. Her race, religion, sex, and the like will doubtless have some effect on such discretionary decisions as well, though of course judges should try to be as impartial as possible. So Judge Sotomayor is factually correct in acknowledging this reality, though I think judges ought to try to set such group identities aside as much as they can while judging.
Yet the statement that one’s ethnicity and sex make one a better judge than someone of another ethnicity and sex – “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” – is troubling. To be sure, if she was just saying that the average “wise” person (of any sex or ethnicity) with “rich … experiences” reaches better conclusions than the average person who may or may not have wisdom or rich experience, that statement is tautologically true. But it’s hard to see how that would be so, especially since she was expressly comparing wise Latina women with white men.
Rather, the statement – read in context – appears to be that Latina womanhood gives people something of an edge when it comes to wisdom, richness of experience, and decisionmaking over white men. That strikes me as factually implausible; white men strike me as no less likely to have wisdom or rich experience as Latino women, even if on balance they may on average have slightly different kinds of experience. And it strikes me as very much the wrong attitude for a judge to take, and to publicly express. Perhaps this was just inartful wording, and Judge Sotomayor meant to say something else; and of course this is just one sentence out of a long legal and judicial career. Still, I think the sentiments that the statement on its face expresses are not the sorts of sentiments that we would like our Supreme Court Justices to have, whether those sentiments would refer to the allegedly greater wisdom of Latino women or white men.
She proved herself a racist….otherwise she would have said a wise latina can make better judgments than BLACK judges…
Specifying “white” proves she considers blacks inferior.
subconsciously of course.