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EDHS Contemporary World Affairs -> Discussion Topics, Week P -> Soto-mejor?
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MrsCavalluzzi


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Soto-mejor?
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I'm reviving last week's topic about the challenges to Sonia Sotomayor because I was interested in the number of responses that seemed to indicate that some of you think her resume is insufficient for the position.

I'm just curious what qualifications those of you who share this opinion feel she's missing.  Is it that she only graduated SECOND in her class from Princeton rather than first?  That she went to Yale Law School, which is occasionally ranked #2 or #3 in the nation instead of #1 (though usually #1 and not out of the top three in the last many decades)?  That she'd be the only sitting Supreme Court justice with district court (read: trial court) judicial experience? (the rest went straight to the appellate bench)?  That she'd have the most pre-Supreme Court judicial experience of any of the justices (Clarence Thomas had served as an appellate court judge for a grand total of one year before he became a Supreme Court justice)? That she was unopposed in her first federal judicial confirmation (when she was appointed by GHW Bush, a Republican) and confirmed 67-29 when she was elevated to an appellate position (by Clinton, a Democrat)?

Full disclosure: I'm not necessarily running for president of her fan club.  I just was quite surprised that people were so ready to brand her as a purely race-based pick when her resume certainly looks impressive to me.  And, I wonder, is it really such a problem for Obama to choose a justice that would make the Court look a little more like America?

Are the objections to her from some of the leaders on the right really just the packaging for a protest that they'd make in one form or another about any non-conservative judge?  Doesn't having won the election give Obama the mandate/privilege to appoint someone who more or less shares his philosophy?  Isn't this pretty much exactly the same as W. Bush using his two Court appointments to nominate Roberts and Alito, both of whom are clearly conservative?






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Bonemail-(Christophe K)


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Her experiance is great that is for sure but to me she is a racist. If a white man had said that he would make better decisions then a latina judge then he would be labeled a racist. Sorry but double standards don't work in my book.

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Snackycakes


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Bonemail-(Christophe K) wrote:

Her experiance is great that is for sure but to me she is a racist. If a white man had said that he would make better decisions then a latina judge then he would be labeled a racist. Sorry but double standards don't work in my book.



 There's another issue that's going around here's the deal:

Firefighters Case

At issue in the case were promotions in the New Haven, Conn., fire department. The city decided its promotion test was flawed because the results would have promoted no African-Americans and that if it didn't design a better test, it would be sued by minority firefighters under the testing provisions of the Civil Rights Act and very likely lose. Instead, the city was sued by a group of white firefighters who scored well on the test and said they were denied promotions because of their race.

A federal district court judge, in a long opinion, said the city was discriminating against no one because all of the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted. Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel that reviewed that decision.

In a six-sentence order, the panel said the New Haven Civil Service Board had no good alternatives, because the test appeared to violate a provision of federal law that treats with grave suspicion tests that produce such racially disproportionate results.

"We are not unsympathetic to the frustration of the white firefighters who studied hard and scored high on the promotion exam," said the panel in its brief, unsigned opinion. "But the city was within its rights to take the steps necessary to avoid liability."

the rest of the article is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104730833



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Luis777


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she has great experience and in my opininon i dont think she is a racist

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Bonemail-(Christophe K)


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Luis777 wrote:

she has great experience and in my opininon i dont think she is a racist



 Might I ask that you explain why you think she is not a racist? As days go by more and more evidence shows otherwise.



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Ankz


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I think labelling her as a racist is a little over the top with a few remarks she made and a firefighter case that she was part of a panel on. I've heard worse things by other people and they aren't labeled as a racist.

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geriatric1991


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Bonemail-(Christophe K) wrote:

Luis777 wrote:

she has great experience and in my opininon i dont think she is a racist



 Might I ask that you explain why you think she is not a racist? As days go by more and more evidence shows otherwise.





 everyone has thier flaws. if its not racism its a foot fetish, if its not a foot fetish its klyptomania (or however its spelled) just accept people as being flawed. and this is a general statement which i think somewhat relates to this topic



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Bonemail-(Christophe K)


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Ankz wrote:

I think labelling her as a racist is a little over the top with a few remarks she made and a firefighter case that she was part of a panel on. I've heard worse things by other people and they aren't labeled as a racist.


Well then they are racists. I try not to even see people by their race but by their actions and deeds. Ya it can get hard sometimes (driving anyone?) but in the end we are all equals and all americans. To put someone that not only thinks those things then says them and acts on them on the highest court in the land would be sending the wrong message.

 



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KW00D


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Although her track record is extremely impressive, President Obama himself stated that her past and upbringing has helped shape her view of the judicial system today. And although that proves to be true for most, if not all judges(of any court), I feel that they've shaped her views to be a little too left-wing for my taste. Nobody on the right is particularly happy with Justice Souter's little surprise, as it were, but I feel that what she brings to the table(all educational merits aside) isn't what we need as a country. And as bad as this sounds, I feel that the Democrats have too much influence(yeah yeah, they're the majority party right now)...but whatever happened to Divided Government?

If I'm not mistaken(and please tell me if I'm wrong! :] ), with the addition of Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court that would make the tally 5-4 Right-wingers(generalizations), however her influence alone could potentially be dangerous to the more conservative people in the United States...if that makes sense?

-- Edited by KW00D on Monday 1st of June 2009 05:42:32 PM

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MrsCavalluzzi


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KW00D wrote:

If I'm not mistaken(and please tell me if I'm wrong! :] ), with the addition of Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court that would make the tally 5-4 Right-wingers(generalizations), however her influence alone could potentially be dangerous to the more conservative people in the United States...if that makes sense?

-- Edited by KW00D on Monday 1st of June 2009 05:42:32 PM


The speculation at present is that Sotomayor would be fairly ideologically consistent with where Souter is now.  Most Court analysts would say that the Court is split 4-4-1, with Justice Kennedy as the swing vote...there's lots more detail about this at:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1818535,00.html

which indicates that in the 2007-08 term, "In the 24 decisions that came down 5-to-4 last year, Kennedy was the decisive vote in every case, never once dissenting. Of those 24, 19 of them reflected the traditional conservative-liberal split (Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Alito versus John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer) with the conservatives winning 13 and the liberals getting six."

and in the most recent issue of TIME, a great article called "Four Myths About The Supreme Court," http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1900851_1900850_1900846,00.html 
that among other things, states that On today's court, the most powerful Justice is Anthony Kennedy. His power comes not from the art of persuasion (which Kennedy rarely practices) but from the simple arithmetic that five votes beats four and Kennedy's is the swing vote on almost every issue. Meanwhile, the most influential Justice is the court's least diplomatic Antonin Scalia. Although he writes opinions that are bombastic and even insulting to other Justices, and although he's never been able to forge a working majority for some of his most important initiatives (like overturning Roe v. Wade), through sheer force of intellect and a bullying style, he has succeeded in profoundly changing the court's entire methodology for interpreting statutes and has made respectable a mode of conservative constitutional interpretation "originalism" that would likely be moribund without him



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Lego, Cav (the Lego brand name was derived from the Danish expression "leg godt" - play well - and lego also translates in Latin as "I study" or "I put together"...really, one of the world's most perfect words!)

 
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