Some insight and commentary regarding the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, Circuit
Court Judge for the Second Judicial Circuit, President Obama's first choice
for the replacement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
**
*EDITORIAL EXEGESIS*
"In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court
yesterday, President Obama appears to have found the ideal match for his
view that personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of
judicial wisdom. This isn't a jurisprudence that the Founders would
recognize, but it is the creative view that has dominated the law schools
since the 1970s and from which both the President and Judge Sotomayor
emerged. In the President's now-famous word, judging should be shaped by
'empathy' as much or more than by reason. In this sense, Judge Sotomayor
would be a thoroughly modern Justice, one for whom the law is a voyage of
personal identity. 'Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by
hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately
overcoming those barriers,' Mr. Obama said yesterday in introducing Ms.
Sotomayor. 'It is experience that can give a person a common touch of
compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people
live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of Justice we
need on the Supreme Court.' ...[Sotomayor] is a judge steeped in the legal
school of identity politics. This is not the same as taking justifiable
pride in being the first Puerto Rican-American nominated to the Court, as
both she and the President did yesterday. ... Judge Sotomayor's belief is
that a 'Latina woman' is by definition a superior judge to a 'white male'
because she has had more 'richness' in her struggle. The danger inherent in
this judicial view is that the law isn't what the Constitution says but
whatever the judge in the 'richness' of her experience comes to believe it
should be. ... As the first nominee of a popular President and with 59
Democrats in the Senate, Judge Sotomayor is likely to be confirmed barring
some major blunder. But Republicans can use the process as a teaching
moment, not to tear down Ms. Sotomayor on personal issues the way the left
tried with Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, but to educate Americans
about the proper role of the judiciary and to explore whether Judge
Sotomayor's Constitutional principles are as free-form as they seem from her
record." --The Wall Street Journal
*UPRIGHT*
*
*"[L]ike conventional liberals, [Sonia Sotomayor] embraces identity
politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what
his or her race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference is, and members of a
particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with --
only by persons of the same identity." --columnist George Will
"Why make this complicated? President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices
who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the
right Hispanic woman for the job." --columnist Jonah Goldberg
"Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest?
The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia
Sotomayor's nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to
her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was
diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later. And,
oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor? It's a 'compelling personal
story,' as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday." --columnist Michelle Malkin
"If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated
on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is
or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver
spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position
could offer?" --economist Thomas Sowell
"Sotomayor believes that law, like beauty, is entirely in the eye of the
beholder. It is therefore of vital importance which beholders are sitting on
the Supreme Court. Judicial philosophy is irrelevant, in this view; the only
true judicial philosophy is personal philosophy." --columnist Ben Shapiro
"Senate Republicans must take a stand and vocally oppose this nomination,
not on the basis of partisan politics, but in defense of the rule of law and
the proper role of the judiciary, principles the president is only
pretending to honor." --columnist David Limbaugh
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