Sotomayor Nomination
Yesterday President Obama nominated 2nd Circuit Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the soon to be vacated Supreme Court seat of David Souter. GW Law Professor Orin Kerr writes on VC that her confirmation is likely:
…at this point I would think Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed. I don’t know a ton about Sotomayor, but her resume hints at someone who is sort of like a liberal mirror image of Samuel Alito: the humble kid who goes to Princeton and Yale Law, becomes a prosecutor, and then gets appointed at a young age to the federal bench and puts in 15 years as a respected (if not particularly high profile) federal judge. In some ways, that makes Sotomayor a pretty conservative pick: Her resume is the kind of very accomplished resume that Supreme Court picks have tended to have in the last two decades or so. Given the make-up of the Senate, and the absence of surprise, I would imagine at this point that Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed.
Here’s another rather comical excerpt from Ronald Cass’s column on Sotomayor’s “identity problem”:
Judge Sotomayor attended prestigious schools (Princeton, Yale Law), did well, achieved professional milestones as a prosecutor, district judge, and court of appeals judge, and became well enough known to be widely touted as a potential Supreme Court appointment. She isn’t seen within the profession as brilliant, a creative legal thinker, especially able at crafting legal decisions, a master of legal analysis, or exposition. But she’s competent enough not to be lumped in with the likes of G. Harold Carswell, the Nixon nominee defended on the ground that people who are mediocre deserve representation on the Supreme Court.
At this point, I would probably bet money on her getting the confirmation. Despite her alleged lack of brilliance, some controversial rulings (see Ricci v. DeStefano), and joking statements about how appeals courts “make laws,” I don’t think this is a fight the Republicans are going to pick out. I’ve heard many commentators say that she is very difficult to work with and is not particularly well liked by her colleagues, so she probably won’t be the leader of a new and improved liberal bloc of the court.
