New York Times: “In her rulings, Judge Sotomayor has repeatedly displayed the empathy Mr. Obama has said he is looking for in a justice.”
Wall Street Journal: “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.”
Senators could ask her, then, how, when deciding a case, she balances the quest for objectivity with her personal experiences. They might also ask her views on judicial activism. In a panel discussion in 2005, she said that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” Conservative critics have seized on this statement to argue that she is a judicial activist who believes judges should make, rather than interpret, the law. Yet her statement could just as easily be understood to be explaining correctly that the courts of appeals — and not the Supreme Court — are the venues where the vast majority of cases and policies are ultimately decided.
Washington Times: “With his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama has abandoned all pretense of being a post-partisan president.”
Some liberal activists hoped that Obama would seek a firebrand to counter Antonin Scalia, the darling of the right. Yet Sotomayor has made her reputation not on hot-button social issues but on matters ranging from environmental regulation to the baseball business. While she presumably shares Obama’s support for abortion rights, she upheld Bush-administration restrictions on family-planning activities by US-funded nonprofits overseas.
Despite a strong Democratic majority in the Senate, Obama’s nominee should be ready for probing confirmation hearings. In a crucial affirmative-action case, she voted to uphold New Haven’s ability to throw out a promotion exam in which minority firefighters fared poorly, but the judges did not explain their reasoning. Senators should press for her analysis of the issue. Sotomayor also has little record on the limits of executive power – which has emerged as a vital issue in the years since Sept. 11.
Even so, conservative groups have seized upon an offhand remark in 2005 – her description of federal appeals courts as the place “where policy is made” – as evidence that Sotomayor would legislate from the bench. The attack is disingenuous; appellate judges by necessity guide lower courts among competing interpretations of often ambiguous laws. Sotomayor’s critics would fault her for even acknowledging the power that appellate judges wield.
New York Post: “Once confirmed, she will join Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the High Court’s sec ond reflexively liberal, Ivy League-educated, female, former appellate jurist from the Big Apple.”
ALSO:
Economist: “Barack Obama’s first pick for the Supreme Court infuriates conservatives.”
New York Daily News [reading is believing this one]: “The Senate owes Sotomayor an expeditious and respectful confirmation hearing, paying deference to Obama’s discretion in selecting a quality judge who suits his outlook.”