Tuesday 26 May 2009

More on Sotomayor (Loving SCOTUS Blog...)

SCOTUS Blog has an excellent post summing up likely Conservative attacks against the nominee and why, ultimately, they do not expect these attacks to be successful.

Republicans cannot afford to find themselves in the position of implicitly opposing Judge Sotomayor. To Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark. It really is impossible to overstate its significance. The achievement of a lifetime appointment at the absolute highest levels of the government is a profound event for that community, which in turn is a vital electoral group now and in the future.

Equally significant for not only Hispanics but all Americans, Sotomayor has an extraordinarily compelling personal narrative. She is a first generation American, born of immigrant parents. She grew up in a housing project, losing her father as
an adolescent, raised (with her brother) by her mother, who worked as a nurse. She got herself to Princeton, graduating as one of the top two people in her class, then went to Yale Law. Almost all of her career has been in public service–as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name.

(...)

Objectively, her qualifications are overwhelming from the perspective of ordinary Americans. She has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge. No one currently on the Court has that complete package of experience.

Read the whole thing - it's fascinating.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am most pleased about Sotomayor's experience as a federal trial court judge. People often focus on rulings on abortion and similar controversial subjects--and I have to admit that I want Roe v. Wade to be upheld as much as anyone else--whilst ignoring that the Supreme Court has to make a number of rulings on difficult procedural and substantive issues that will affect countless civil and criminal cases being heard in trial courts throughout the country. At the moment, nobody on the Supreme Court has been a trial court judge, limiting the justices' ability to comprehend how practical it is to implement the rulings that they issue.