Friday, May 29, 2009

I'm 4 Sotomayor

originally posted at: 2BucksWorth.com

There has been alot of sound a fury from the right over the nomination of federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme court. I've given it alot of thought and frankly I can't see the reason for all the fuss.

Yes, she is a liberal judge (what did you expect? President Obama is a liberal...President Bush appointed two conservatives to the court, why does this shock anyone?) No, she is not a strict constructionist (again, neither is the President, and he won the right to make the appointments). But some food for thought for my conservative brethren & sistren before they go hammer & tongs after this woman.

1. She's replacing a liberal justice, so it's not like this is tipping the balance of the court.
2. She's going to get confirmed anyway. the GOP doesn't have the votes in the Senate to do anything about it.
3. She'll be the first Hispanic justice. Now, I know that shouldn't matter, and it truly doesn't matter to me. But if you think it won't matter at the ballot box if you savage the lady in the Senate, you're nuts.
4. She's turning out to be more conservative-ish than originally thought. While she'll never put Rush Limbaugh out of work ,she has sided with the conservative member of the appellate court more often than her liberal colleague. And she has made some very strong anti-abortion statements (she's a Catholic, you know...and she'll make 6 Catholics out of 9 justices. Again, that shouldn't matter regarding her confirmation, but it can't make pro-choice activist groups very comfortable.)

So if I were running the show for the senate GOP (which I decidedly am not), I would make sure she was asked some tough questions and given a chance to explain some of her more controversial remarks; then I would not only vote for her confirmation, I would applaud it. It's a win-win for Republicans. If she turns out to be far left, we got what we expected. But if she is indeed closer to the center than originally suspected, the court shifts to the right even more.

Nolanbuck

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that it's a done deal. But I was really disturbed by her comments regarding the judiciary making law.

2 BUCKS said...

That is one of the three tough questions she's going to have to answer, IMO. I assume you are refering to her quote:

"The saw is that if you're going into academia, you're going to teach, or as Judge Lucero just said, public interest law, all of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is -- court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know -- and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. OK, I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it, I'm -- you know. OK. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating -- its interpretation, its application. And Judge Lucero is right. I often explain to people, when you're on the district court, you're looking to do justice in the individual case. So you are looking much more to the facts of the case than you are to the application of the law because the application of the law is non-precedential, so the facts control. On the court of appeals, you are looking to how the law is developing, so that it will then be applied to a broad class of cases. And so you're always thinking about the ramifications of this ruling on the next step in the development of the law. You can make a choice and say, "I don't care about the next step," and sometimes we do. Or sometimes we say, "We'll worry about that when we get to it" -- look at what the Supreme Court just did. But the point is that that's the differences -- the practical differences in the two experiences are the district court is controlled chaos and not so controlled most of the time.

She was answering a question about how to get into teaching law, she was stating what she saw as a fact, not neccessarily advocating for legislating from the bench. Not many sources are including the whole quote, and they are taking it out of context in some cases.

The other two big questions she needs to answer IMO are about this comment:
"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."
(which the President has already said was poorly worded), and the New Haven firefighter case.