The news is all abuzz this morning about Obama’s SCOTUS pick, Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor has made some remarkable statements over the years, and I am sure that more will surface as time passes. For instance, “…the court of appeals is where policy is made” has ruffled some feathers (I don’t think that I need to explain what is wrong with this to the readers of this blog), but Huffington Post has ridden to the rescue, claiming:
for legal experts, there is nothing actually controversial to what Sotomayor said. Her political crime, if there were one in this case, was speaking the truth.”She’s not wrong,” said Jeffrey Segal, a professor of law at Stony Brook University. “Of course they make policy… You can, on one hand, say Congress makes the law and the court interprets it. But on the other hand the law is not always clear. And in clarifying those laws, the courts make policy.”
Well, there is policy, and then there is policy…
Another winning comment, one that displays a wonderful example of the inherent bigotry and racism in identity politics, is: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
The responses to this comment have been interesting. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points out Stuart Taylor’s reply:
Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.
Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: “I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life” — and had proceeded to speak of “inherent physiological or cultural differences.”
Good point, no?
Other interesting tidbits: Orin Kerr on The Volokh Conspiracy notes, “If I’m not mistaken, she would be the third Yale Law grad of the nine Justices on the Court; the sixth Catholic; the ninth former court of appeals Judge; and the first Second Circuit judge to get the nod since Thurgood Marshall in 1967.” If you are interested in several other reactions to the Sotomayor nomination, keep an eye on The Volokh Conspiracy, they already have several thoughts that are worth reading.
The bit about Sotomayor’s Catholicism is particularly apropos, since the natural question that we must hope and pray for relates to abortion law, etc. One wishes that being a Catholic would automatically mean having a respect for human life from conception onwards, but we know that is frequently not the case. Notably, Sotomayor, from what I have read so far, has not been outspoken one way or the other on abortion questions. Ben Feller reports,
Abortion rights have been a flashpoint in several recent Supreme Court confirmations, although Sotomayor has not written any controversial rulings on the subject.
As a federal appeals court judge in 2002, she ruled against an abortion rights group that had challenged a government policy prohibiting foreign organizations receiving U.S. funds from performing or supporting abortions.
In her opinion, Sotomayor wrote that the government was free to favor the anti-abortion position over a pro-choice position when public funds were involved.
As I said, more will inevitably surface on all of these issues, but perhaps we can hope for a proper treatment of abortion (that is, let the states decide).
One final point: It will be interesting to see what the Senate Republicans will do. It is rather a tough spot, for obvious racial, electoral reasons (which, I am sure, our President thoroughly considered). As of right now, I think that they will not make much of a fuss, and that Sotomayor will be confirmed, but again, we will see.
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