Sonia Sotomayor
In a strike against diversity, Obama has nominated another Catholic to replace David Souter. On the other hand, she would be only the third woman on the court and the first Latina--so she will bring a little diversity, too. The Times expands:
President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daugh
ter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice....
Judge Sotomayor, 54, who has served for more than a decade on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York City, would become the nation’s 111th justice, replacing David H. Souter, who is retiring after 19 years on the bench. Although Justice Souter was appointed by the first President George Bush, he became a mainstay of the liberal faction on the court, and so his replacement by Judge Sotomayor likely would not shift the overall balance of power....
After Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, she worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the district attorney’s office in New York and later was in private practice. The first President Bush nominated her in 1991 to the federal district court on the recommendation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, and she was confirmed a year later. President Bill Clinton decided to elevate her to the appeals court in 1997, and she was confirmed a year later....
On the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor has not been involved in many hotly disputed decisions, but one that she participated in is before the Supreme Court right now. As part of a panel, she voted to uphold New Haven’s decision to throw out a set of fire department promotion tests because no minority candidates made the top of the list. White firefighters who scored high but were denied promotion are appealing that ruling.
As a district judge, she briefly earned fame in 1995 by ending a Major League Baseball strike, ruling in favor of players and against the owners, who she said were trying to subvert the labor system.
Let the analysis commence!
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May 26, 2009 |
Jeff Alworth | Comments (58 so far)
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Posted by: Admiral Naismith | May 26, 2009 10:15:12 AM
I'm disappointed. I wanted Obama to nominate Hawaii's Registrar of Births.
Just to watch the Republican conspiracy theorists scream. If even one of them had chewed off its own tongue in apoplexy before Obama withdrew the nomination and appointed his real pick, it would have been worth it.
Posted by: Jamais Vu | May 26, 2009 10:41:49 AM
Jeff, got any info on major decisions Sotomayor has ruled on? Anything ground breaking? I've not been able to find anything that jumps out.
Diversity of gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background would all benefit from Sotomayor being confirmed.
But what about intellectual diversity? Consider this list of justices & their law schools:
Roberts--> Harvard
Stevens-->Northwestern
Scalia-->Harvard
Kennedy-->Harvard
Souter-->Harvard
Thomas-->Yale
Ginsburg-->attended Harvard, degree from Columbia
Breyer-->Harvard
Alito-->Yale
Sotomayor-->Yale
So we currently have 8/9 of the Supremes coming from 2 law schools, out of the 199 wikipedia lists for the country. Sotomayor would do nothing to change that.
I'm not a lawyer, but seriously, are Harvard and Yale so much better than every other law school in the country that they are the only intellectual communities worthy of Supreme Court representation? If so, it appears anyone who spends money to get a law degree elsewhere is wasting their money.
Posted by: Jack Roberts | May 26, 2009 10:56:56 AM
For what it's worth, I think this is an excellent choice for Obama. The complaint that she is from Yale rings hollow; when you are picking the first Latina justice, it makes sense to pick someone with impeccable academic and judicial credentials. You always want to give your opponents a minimum of targets to shoot at.
She was part of the Court of Appeals panel that decided the Ricci v. Stefano case, upholding a New Jersey affirmative action policy relating to firefighteers that is currently before the Supreme Court.
George Will recently suggested that could hurt her if (as he expects) the Supreme Court overturns that decision. I think he has his politics confused. If the decision is reversed, the voters who are upset will be exactly the ones who want to see someone like Judge Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.
Actually, there will be more political backlash against Sotomayor if the decision is upheld, but not enough to sink her nomination, in my opinion.
Absent some skeletons in her closet, she should be confirmed by a wide, bipartisan margin.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 26, 2009 11:05:43 AM
Jeff, got any info on major decisions Sotomayor has ruled on? Anything ground breaking?
Just what I read in the news.
On the issue of Harvard/Yale, I agree in broad outlines, but in the case of Sotomayor, it's perhaps not quite as big a deal. She does not come from the ruling aristocracy, and her formal education will be offset by far broader life experiences than the average Ivy grad.
Posted by: Karol | May 26, 2009 11:18:02 AM
Jeff,
How is being Catholic and Latina a strike against diversity? Am I a strike against diversity? Please explain more what you mean.
Posted by: Dean | May 26, 2009 11:31:03 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15judge.html
“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,” said Judge Sotomayor
Given that statement, she sounds like a racist to me.
Imagine the outcry if the tables were turned:
"I would hope that a wise White man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a Latina Woman who hasn't lived that life"....
Posted by: Jamais Vu | May 26, 2009 11:32:46 AM
Here's an interesting ruling of hers in Maloney vs. Cuomo:
Sotomayor upheld the following decision:
"The district court granted defendant Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in relevant part because the Second Amendment does not apply to the States and therefore imposed no limitations on New York’s ability to prohibit the possession of nunchakus."
Aside from the comical image of nunchakus being a 2nd Amendment right, I find it frankly disturbing that a potential Supreme Court justice would rule that any part of the Bill of Rights only applies to federal and not state law. This seems to fly in the face of the entire civil rights movement to say that Constitutional protections do not supersede state law. Read the decision--I hope I read it wrong.
Posted by: JHL | May 26, 2009 11:51:00 AM
How is being Catholic and Latina a strike against diversity?
I thought that was a joke. Well, anyway, I laughed.
Posted by: Greg D. | May 26, 2009 11:53:49 AM
Re: Harvard & Yale
Given that most Supreme Court members come from the East Coast legal establishment, try finding highly successful members of the East Coast "White Shoe" legal establishment who did not graduate from either Harvard or Yale. Very difficult. I understand that at White & Case LLP they do occasionally employ Standford Law graduates, but primarily as stable cleaners for the partners' polo ponies.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 26, 2009 12:06:41 PM
It was a joke. She's obviously a radical departure. We've had 110 justices and if my math's correct, 106 have been white men. I was just horsing around with the Catholic thing. There are a surprising number of them on the bench.
Posted by: Jamais Vu | May 26, 2009 12:06:45 PM
Another view on the Maloney vs. Cuomo ruling.
"...it's hard not to see the 2nd Circuit panel's opinion as deliberately ducking a question about which its members, including Sotomayor, might have had public policy misgivings..."
Worth reading.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 26, 2009 12:28:28 PM
Okay, one bit of analysis. There is a certain genius to selecting Sotomayor. Put it in the "pick the fight you want to have" camp (aka, the Brer Rabbit strategem). As news spreads, you're starting to see a lot of this quote:
"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."
If you consider the frame of this nomination in the abstract, before there were names attached, you could have reduced the debate, as always, to a single word: abortion. This is not a fight Obama relished. So instead, he picks the fight he does want, one which he'll surely win and which will in the process weaken his opponents. The Republicans, perpetually apoplectic by the affirmative action-ization of America, may well fall into the trap, citing this quote as evidence of the Democratic facination with "identity politics." If they do, they'll end up losing the fight, because obviously, the pool of potential Supremes extends beyond white men. Worse, they'll solidify their status as the party of a radicalized wing of quasi-bigots from the old South.
Game on.
Posted by: Dean | May 26, 2009 12:49:28 PM
Jeff,
Funny, you would think picking a Supreme would be all about what's best for America and the Constitution.
But instead it's about "picking a fight", setting a "trap", and a "Game".
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 26, 2009 1:00:43 PM
Dean, there are dozens of competent judges able to serve on the Supreme Court. But the president can only pick one. In this way, his selection of Sotomayor was politically astute.
Do you believe she's not qualified?
Posted by: Jamais Vu | May 26, 2009 1:10:57 PM
Wikipedia has a good list of major cases in which Sotomayor has ruled.
An important case of hers concerning an affirmative action case filed by white firefighters from New Haven (hardly the bastion of "radicalized wing of quasi-bigots from the old South") is currently pending before SCOTUS.
Posted by: Dylan Amo | May 26, 2009 1:42:40 PM
Hey Jeff and all-
Here is a very helpful summary that was passed on to me by a friend.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 26, 2009 3:04:48 PM
I'm wondering who Barack Obama will nominate as ambassador to the Confederate States of America (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Esq., Grand Dragon).
Posted by: Chung-Su | May 26, 2009 5:53:37 PM
Latinos are just another sub-set of white people. For real diversity Obama should pick an Asian-American.
Posted by: Jack Roberts | May 26, 2009 6:21:27 PM
Latinos are just another sub-set of white people.
Of course they are.
[sarcastic smirk not visible on the internet]
Posted by: dddave | May 26, 2009 7:14:44 PM
Jeez, cant we just have the best jurist to interpret the Constitution?
No.
female, check.
Minority, check.
living document liberal negative bill of rights we as the government can do more for you - check.....
Posted by: Random Professor | May 26, 2009 9:26:03 PM
Diversity? Come on Obama, she's just another lawyer. You want diversity on the court, how about appointing someone that's done hard time?
Posted by: Jamais Vu | May 26, 2009 9:49:41 PM
Actually, Chung-su, "Latinos" are a cultural group, not a racial one. I'm confident there are many Afro-Cubans, Peruvian Japanese or Spanish-speaking Indigenous Mexicans who would be surprised to discover they are "just another subset of white people." But hey, the definition of white keeps expanding: Italians, Armenians and Irish used to be excluded too. Maybe in 20 or 50 years everyone or no one will be "white."
Posted by: Ian | May 26, 2009 10:43:55 PM
Random Professor writes: "Diversity? Come on Obama, she's just another lawyer. You want diversity on the court, how about appointing someone that's done hard time?"
Lawyering, vs. hard time. And the distinction is------?
Thank you...be sure to tip your waitress.
Posted by: travesti | May 27, 2009 2:19:38 AM
Here is a very helpful summary that was passed on to me by a friend.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 27, 2009 7:11:52 AM
Dddave, it never occurred to you that she was selected because she's a good jurist, did it? Or is it your view that all non-white, non-males are innately inferior and advanced only through Democratic patronage. Who exactly is playing the identity politics here?
Posted by: Bob Tiernan | May 27, 2009 8:56:05 AM
Jamais Vu:
Jeff, got any info on major decisions Sotomayor has ruled on?
Bob T:
Why would he care? All that matters is ethnicity and gender (some better than others, apparently). But if reads about some of the rulings he'll probably like her more because of her record of making up stuff.
Bob Tiernan
Portland
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 27, 2009 2:08:15 PM
Why would he care? All that matters is ethnicity and gender
When was the last time Tiernan made this comment in regards to a Anglo male judicial nominee? Uh, never, I think. That's because of the Obvious Principle of Natural Law that "Anglo" and "male" are the standard relative to which all else much be judged. "Anglo" and "male" are obviously terms devoid of meaning as far as ethnicity and gender are concerned. It's only terms like "Latina" and "female" that indicate ethnicity and gender.
This is the same Obvious Principle of Natural Law that renders laissez-faire capitalism the Natural Order of Things, and every other form of socio-economic organization a perversion.
Sorry, Bob, but nobody with an A+ ranking from the Ayn Rand Society made the short list. Bummer, I know, but maybe you'll have better luck under the Ron Paul / Bob Barr administration.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 27, 2009 2:21:50 PM
FWIW, Bob, I'm not competent to judge a judge. You probably aren't, either. But those who are say she's an outstanding jurist. But by all means, continue to focus on her race and sex.
So far, the righties are falling right into the trap Obama set for them--which I described above. A thing to behold.
Posted by: Dan Petegorsky | May 27, 2009 2:36:54 PM
I've done an informal survey among friends and colleagues, and by far the most damning aspect of Judge Sotomayor's record that's been raised so far is that she is a lifelong...(wait for the punchline)...Yankees fan.
Posted by: Bob Tiernan | May 27, 2009 11:16:20 PM
joel dan walls:
"Why would he care? All that matters is ethnicity and gender"
When was the last time Tiernan made this comment in regards to a Anglo male judicial nominee?
Bob T:
Why would I need to? When Bush/Bush etc picked white
males, it was because of perceived support for dumping
Roe v. Wade.
Bob Tiernan
Portland
Posted by: Bob Tiernan | May 27, 2009 11:25:44 PM
Jeff Alworth:
FWIW, Bob, I'm not competent to judge a judge. You probably aren't, either. But those who are say she's an outstanding jurist.
Bob T:
Some do; some don't.
Jeff Alworth:
But by all means, continue to focus on her race and sex.
Bob T:
I'll leave that to you, but I should have added that this is true only if they are the right kind (i.e. Clarence Thomas was "no good", and neither was the Hispanic GW tried to elevate into the Federal Court system, but for what it's worth his choice of Harriet Myers was dreadful).
I don't believe that the judicial system "needs" to "look like America" in order to do its job properly. I don't particularly like this choice because of her tendency to make up stuff. Can you tell me what she was interpreting when she made her decision re: the firefighter promotions? Or was she simply inserting her own values?
I doubt that you have any idea what I think of each of the current members of the USSC, and potential members.
Bob Tiernan
Portland
Posted by: Chris #12 | May 28, 2009 12:07:38 AM
I'm surprised that no one on this progressive blog has pointed this out:
Marjorie Cohn is the president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She said today: "It is significant that President Obama has nominated the first Latino to the Supreme Court and Sonia Sotomayor will bring to two the number of women on the high court. She will be a solid liberal but will not change the political balance of the Court since she will replace Justice David Souter. Although she will likely be called upon to review Obama’s decisions on interrogation policies, preventive detention and the state secrets privilege, Sotomayor’s views on executive power are largely unknown. But with this pick, Obama has missed an opportunity to tap a liberal intellectual giant like William Brennan who will have a major impact on the Court for years to come. George W. Bush didn’t hesitate to choose two unabashedly right-wing justices. Obama could have chosen Pamela Karlan, Harold Koh or Erwin Chemerinsky, who would have provided a true progressive counterweight to Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas."
More centrism from Obama--shocker!
Posted by: LT | May 28, 2009 12:26:49 AM
" Can you tell me what she was interpreting when she made her decision re: the firefighter promotions? Or was she simply inserting her own values?"
When I heard about this case for the first time, I thought about my Ed Research prof. That class was basically a required statistics class for educators seeking the Standard Certificate, and we learned to evaluate studies and test questions.
We had a multiple choice test for the midterm and it had 52 questions. The prof was convinced that if more than 70% of the class missed a question, it was probably the fault of the question, not the students. So that gave him leeway to throw out a couple of questions if he thought they were poorly written.
There is a whole science to writing test questions--are they valid and reliable?
Of course, there are those who make this all about reverse discrimination. I happen to think it could be about test construction.
BTW, I think Sandra Day O'Connor was a great justice, whether I always agreed with her or not. One issue brought up when she was nominated was something she did as a legislative leader. Arizona had a rule against non-germane amendments. Some pressure group wanted to add a "hot button" issue amendment to a college construction bill and she said it was not germane and would not be allowed. The lobbyists for the issue called her all kinds of names. I happened to think she made the right call--rules exist for a reason.
I wonder if the test issue isn't something like that.
Posted by: travesti | May 28, 2009 10:56:12 AM
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Posted by: Joe White | May 28, 2009 11:47:12 AM
La Raza, the racist organization that Sotomayor belongs to, supports drivers licenses for illegal aliens.
As does Obama.
It's all about getting illegals the ability to live here, stay here, and vote here.
Obama made it clear that he wasn't interested in appointing justices based on judicial ability, but on 'empathy' for those 'outside'. And he has followed thru on that promise.
With the coming flood of illegals, don't expect unemployment to go down any time soon, or wages to rise. They won't.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 28, 2009 10:22:48 PM
Yo Joe White, when Samuel Alito said this in his comfirmation hearings:
"I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point...."
...did you get all bent out of shape that he would let empathy get in the way of judging?
But anyway, keep it up with the bashing of Latinos. The fastest growing ethnic group in the US is already voting 2 to 1 Democratic. The Tancredo-like rhetoric that you're spouting ought to drive that to, oh 3 to 1 or so, especially as the older generation of Cuban exiles dies off.
BTW the National Council of La Raza is a civil-rights advocacy group akin to the NAACP. But then you'd probably call the NAACP racist, too.
Posted by: Bob Tiernan | May 28, 2009 11:17:49 PM
Jeff Alworth:
But by all means, continue to focus on her race and sex.
Bob T:
Like I said, her opponents aren't doing that. Interesting that some mentioned that we have too many white guys, and/or that a Repub president wouldn't be accused of considering skin color when choosing yet another white male for the USSC or a Federal circuit court. But the focus on race or gender comes from you guys, which is why Thomas was almost lynched, and why Estrada was held up (a Hispanic being groomed for higher positions, but in the minds of progressives, the wrong kind of Hispanic in that, as with Thomas, it was not good to show that a black or Hispanic could think in terms other than group and welfare rights, and for him or herself).
Soooo, what follows (and what would have followed had Thomas withdrawn his name) would be a "safe" white guy again, approved by the Dems. And then they blame the Repub for picking him instead of.......
Bob Tiernan
Portland
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 29, 2009 7:48:15 AM
Bob T sez: Like I said, her opponents aren't [focusing on her race and sex].
Excuse me, Mr. Tiernan, but what planet are you on?
Unless I am badly mistaken, race and sex are obvious outward characteristics for virtually all of humanity. We all notice such characteristics. What we decide to make of those characteristics is another matter.
When Scalia was appointed to the SCOTUS, and later when there was speculation about him becoming chief justice, there was explicit recognition of his Italian ancestry by, amongst others, some on the political right . As far as I know, this was not an occasion for speculation that his judging was (or would be) rooted in stereotypes about Italian Americans. Ditto for Justice Alito, another Italian American, who mused about his life story during his confirmation hearings.
"White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw," former House speaker Newt Gingrich ranted Wednesday on Twitter...
Gingrich's outburst was in reaction to a widely publicized, out-of-context quote from a 2001 speech in which Sotomayor mused about how her identity might or might not affect her decisions as a federal judge. Far from being some kind of "racist" screed, the speech was actually a meditation on Sotomayor's personal experience of a universal truth: Who we are inevitably influences what we do.
Each of us carries through life a unique set of experiences. Sotomayor's happen to be the experiences of a brilliant, high-powered Latina -- a Nuyorican who was raised in the projects of the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, edited the Yale Law Journal, worked as a Manhattan prosecutor and a corporate lawyer, and served for 17 years as a federal trial and appellate judge.
*************************
If the GOP talking heads want to keep using "Hispanic" as a term of derision, that's their choice. It's a stupid choice, but it's theirs to make.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 29, 2009 8:03:10 AM
One has to wonder how the wingnuts would respond to the nomination of, say, a Mexican American with the surname Fox, or a Chilean American with a French surname. That very Spanish surname Sotomayor just seems to trigger wingnut bouts of apoplexy.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 29, 2009 9:25:43 AM
And an excerpt from Paul Krugman on the whole identity politics schtick:
"The thing that is really driving conservatives crazy, I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to. Their whole approach has been based on the belief that Americans vote as if they live in Mayberry, and fear and hate anyone who looks a bit different; now that the country just isn’t like that, they’ve gone mad."
Posted by: rlw | May 29, 2009 1:45:22 PM
The moments of highest comedy, for me, occur every time I hear the starkly ridiculous utterances related to "objectivity" or some purity of such.
No such thing. Really.
Even the guys on Philosophy Talk admit as much in rueful glee.
And the commentary on Soto's background and "emotionality potential" is just this side of racist and genderist. Egad.
Posted by: SY0-201 | Jun 15, 2009 12:51:37 AM
According to me, it was just like a funny story. She is perceptibly a fundamental departure. There were 110 justices and if I am not wrong, 106 have been white men. I was just horsing just about with the wide-ranging item. Thanks.
Posted by: travesti | Jun 18, 2009 7:53:55 AM
living document liberal negative bill of rights we as the government can do more for you - check.....
Posted by: travesti | Jun 18, 2009 7:54:02 AM
living document liberal negative bill of rights we as the government can do more for you - check.....
Posted by: manifestmoney | Oct 1, 2009 1:03:20 AM
I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to.
Posted by: John Canady | Oct 8, 2009 6:18:15 AM
"Sotomayor peppered the lawyers with questions in a pair of cases, joining with Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the oral arguments. Together, they left the other justices sitting in silence for much of the time." Published, Loss Angles Times.
Posted by: Drug Addiction | Oct 16, 2009 8:46:57 PM
I believe Judge Sotomayor will fill in just well. Throughout her 10 year career, she has been an institution in our legal system.
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Posted by: aberton | May 26, 2009 9:56:47 AM
President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor
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.
See details of her biography:Judge Sonia Sotomayor-news-online