Big Fat Story
President Obama said he wanted a judge with “a little bit of a common touch and a practical sense of how the world works." Sonia Sotomayor seems to fit the bill. The child of Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in the 1960s in a housing project near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. As a 10-year-old, she was inspired to pursue law not by, say, Earl Warren, but Perry Mason. “The Manhattan-born Sotomayor's humble upbringing has shaped her personality—vibrant and colorful, and so different from the Bronx projects where she grew up in a working-class existence in a home with a drab yellow kitchen,” writes the Associated Press. “She is a food-loving baseball buff as likely to eat a hot dog at a street corner stand as she is to sit down for a lengthy meal at a swanky Manhattan restaurant.” She attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, then “joined the Manhattan district attorney's office and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.” Speaking about her own upbringing and the odds she overcame to be a successful judge, Sotomayor has said, “We should applaud more frequently those who transform a lost life”—a sentiment that must certainly resonate with the Barack Obama who wrote, Dreams From My Father.
Photo: AP Photo
Controversial article could foreshadow GOP plan.
Is Sotomayor ready for the big leagues? Jeffrey Rosen wrote an article for The New Republic arguing that she is not, with barbed anonymous quotes from former colleagues like: "[She’s] not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench. She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." Rosen added, “Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees.” The piece drew a torrent of criticism. Glenn Greenwald called it “such a model of shoddy, irresponsible, and (ironically enough) intellectually shallow ‘journalism’ that it ought to be studied carefully.” Adam Serwer at the American Prospect wrote, “Rosen's real problem with Sotomayor may be that she's not that white, and not that male, and therefore not that qualified.” American University law professor Darren Lenard Hutchinson offered a point-by-point critique. Could this be a preview of the political firestorm to come?
Photo: Mark Lennihan / AP Photo
Making history—and a political calculation.
Putting the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court is a historic moment, to be sure, but it’s also one with major political ramifications. Ever since Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic in November, pundits have suggested that such a pick could help the Democrats capture the Hispanic vote for a generation. There’s also the matter of practical politicking. Before the pick, NBC’s First Read reported that “Hispanic Democratic leaders are pleased, but not necessarily ecstatic” about Obama’s Latino appointments; Hispanic congressmen were lobbying for a pick even before Souter’s seat became available. Republicans, meanwhile, are trembling. The immigration debacle chased Latino voters away in 2006 and 2008; Obama’s bold pick figures to make things even worse. “Mathematically,” says one former GOP congressman who has surveyed the numbers, “we can’t there get from here.”
Photo: Aude Guerrucci / Getty Images
Judging Sonia
Obama’s nominee has been called a judicial activist and had her intelligence questioned. But she has an inspiring personal story and could help Obama and the Democrats reshape the political landscape. Six angles on a historic nomination.
Republicans are preparing to attack Sotomayor as a “hard left” activist, but, as Joe Conanson at Salon points out, “It is worth recalling that she was originally nominated to the federal bench by the first President Bush (just like Souter) with the support of then-Sens. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), a hardline conservative, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), hardly a doctrinaire liberal.” Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog publishes an overview of Sotomayor’s appellate decisions in civil cases, breaking them down by issue. On the one abortion rights case she took part in, where a group challenged the Bush administration’s policy that banned funding of foreign organizations that performed abortions, she held the government “is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position.” In a free-speech case where the NYPD fired an employee who replied to charity solicitations with racist letters, she backed the employee, warning her colleagues against “gloss[ing] over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives just because it is confronted with speech is does not like.” She is typically—but not always—sympathetic to the plaintiff in discrimination cases. In terms of state secrets, she twice ruled to reject Freedom of Information Act requests, writing in one opinion that she did not want to “unreasonably hamper agencies in their decision-making.”
Photo: AP Photo
What's her take on abortion? Or gun rights?
As a federal judge on one of the busiest circuits in the country, Sonia Sotomayor has had to tackle hundreds of cases. However, on hot-button issues like abortion and gun rights, her paper trail is less than extensive. In one case, she sided with President Bush and denied a claim challenging the "Mexico City rule" that prevents foreign aid from going to organizations that perform or support abortions. As for the Second Amendment, Sotomayor shot down a claim that New York's ban on nunchucks violated the right to bear arms, writing that, "The Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right," and not to state and local authority. The Times has a full rundown of her opinions.
Nominee called Court of Appeals the place “where policy is made.”
Here’s a thorny issue GOP senators will ask Sotomayor about during her confirmation hearings. In a talk at Duke in 2005, Sotomayor said that the “Court of Appeals [on which she was serving] is where policy is made.” Perhaps sensing she had just touched the tripwire of “judicial activism,” Sotomayor backtracked, explaining, “I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't ‘make law,’ I know. … I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it.” Too late for some GOPers, like Orrin Hatch, who called the statement a “problem.” But the Volokh Conspiracy’s Jonathan Adler explained that, practically speaking, she’s right: “many policy disputes are resolved in the federal courts of appeals. This is an indisputably true observation.”
Photo: 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals
Republicans are preparing to attack Sotomayor as a “hard left” activist, but, as Joe Conanson at Salon points out, “It is worth recalling that she was originally nominated to the federal bench by the first President Bush (just like Souter) with the support of then-Sens. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), a hardline conservative, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), hardly a doctrinaire liberal.” Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog publishes an overview of Sotomayor’s appellate decisions in civil cases, breaking them down by issue. On the one abortion rights case she took part in, where a group challenged the Bush administration’s policy that banned funding of foreign organizations that performed abortions, she held the government “is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position.” In a free-speech case where the NYPD fired an employee who replied to charity solicitations with racist letters, she backed the employee, warning her colleagues against “gloss[ing] over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives just because it is confronted with speech is does not like.” She is typically—but not always—sympathetic to the plaintiff in discrimination cases. In terms of state secrets, she twice ruled to reject Freedom of Information Act requests, writing in one opinion that she did not want to “unreasonably hamper agencies in their decision-making.”
Photo: AP Photo
milkman57
Obama wins either way with this pick. If she's approved then it's the "first" Hispanic and a female on the court thus more votes for Obama and the dems. The longer the republicans hold this pick up the more racist stuff will come out from the right. It will piss off Hispanics and thus less Hispanic votes for the right. If she's going to be confirmed anyway then it hurts the republicans less if it is done quickly.
Franklyn
Obama has made a believer out of this (former) republican. In his selection of Sotomayor, he has clearly choosing again to govern from the center, which is where most Americans are. He is obviously intent on creating as diverse a government as possible/practical. I've always believed that when you leave both extremes dissatisfied the majority of the time, you're probably on the right track, and governing appropriatly. After 8 years of a divisive, know-nothing presidency, dominated by two evil machiavellians (D.C./D.R.), how refreshing to see a man who tries to determine where the nation is, and make policy and appointments accordingly!!
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