May 26, 2009
Obama Selects Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court
So says the Associated Press...
U.S. President Barack Obama tapped U.S. Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, officials said, making her the first Hispanic in history picked to wear the robes of a justice.
UPDATE:
This is from a Sotomayor supporter, interviewed by Jeffrey Rosen in the New Republic...
She's a fine Second Circuit judge--maybe not the smartest ever, but how often are Supreme Court nominees the smartest ever?Memories of G. Harrold Carswell, anyone?
UPDATE II:
Three quick bullets out of the AP story...
"In one of Sotomayor's most notable decisions, as an appellate judge she sided last year with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case brought by white firefighters. The city threw out results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough."
"As a federal appeals court judge in 2002, Sotomayor ruled against an abortion rights group that had challenged a government policy prohibiting foreign organizations receiving U.S. funds from performing or supporting abortions.
(On a bit of a lighter note) "In one of her most memorable rulings as federal district judge, Sotomayor essentially salvaged baseball in 1995, ruling with players over owners in a labor strike that had led to the cancellation of the World Series."
Sotomayor has had Type 1 diabetes since childhood,which makes her likely to have serious medical problems.I guess she has so far managed to do okay,but not everyone does as well as Mary Tyler Moore.
Her decision in the New Haven case is what I find most troubling about her.It is before the Supreme Court right now and a reversal of her decision might impact her chances at confirmation.
She isn't as bad a choice as Kagan or Wood or Granholm.
This is probably the least surprising SCOTUS pick possible for Obama to have made. I figured the pick would be Hispanic, since it's really the only major ethnic group which hasn't yet had a seat on it. She's made a few statements that are troubling, in regard to the Supreme Court "making policy,", as well as those which could be perceived as anti-gun rights. She's also considered to be pro-abortion, but I wouldn't have expected anything different from Obama. Fortunately, she'll be replacing someone who just may be more liberal than she. I'm not sure we'd have the votes to stop her from going through, but that doesn't mean that the confirmation process is going to be a cakewalk either.
Posted by: Will at May 26, 2009 12:02 PMThe question about the quality of her intellect is answered quite easily: one does not graduate summa cum laude from Princeton and become the editor of the Yale Law Review without a first rate mind. There are many questions to ask about this nominee, but her intellect is not one of them.
Posted by: Pragmatist at May 26, 2009 5:55 PMHer intellect is not an issue.
What is disturbing are the following:
(a)stating that the appellate courts make policy and being smirky about it being on tape-it's a "let them eat cake"attitude about a very serious subject
(b)taking a Black complainant's side in a suit alleging "damages"because fellow nurses were speaking Filipino among themselves-what would her reaction have been to a White male complaining about fellow workers speaking Spanish?
(c)stating that a judge should rule based on gender and ethnicity-I think that used to be called bigotry
(d)the remark about the "wise Latina" with "rich experience" being a superior arbiter to White males-more racist blather
(e)alleging that "Heller" does not apply to states and cities-she just dislikes gun owners and willtwist the law to violate their rights
(f)she was severely criticized by Judge Cabranes of the same appellate panel she sat on in the Ricci case for not addressing the central issues of a very complex case and instead issuing a perfunctory one paragraph decision-Judge Cabranes is also Hispanic so the standard RI Future whine of "racism" won't apply
This is more of Obama's nonstop assault on the laws and traditions of this country.
I hope she is kept from the SC bench.
There are hundreds of Bush appointees, many of them pretty young, sitting on appellate courts right now. If she were really trying to make policy from there, she'd have been waaaaaay outnumbered.
She just revealed a dirty little secret of the judicial trade, that's all.
Rhody-there aren't "hundreds"of Federal Appellate Judges to begin with.Some of them have been there since Jimmy Carter's days.
You sounded like Patrick Kennedy referring to "millions"of kids in RI.