Throughout the weeks leading up to the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, one often heard that President Obama was thinking in threes. He wasn't just seating this one Supreme Court nominee—he was teeing up the next two for more controversial hearings down the road. If that was the case, one has to wonder whether the Sotomayor hearings made it easier for Obama to select a more liberal candidate should John Paul Stevens or Ruth Bader Ginsburg retire in the next few years.
Conservative groups are crowing that by staging what was, in effect, a three-day infomercial for judges as mechanical umpires who simply "apply the law" by "calling balls and strikes," Sotomayor, confirmed or not, has proved conclusively that it's John Roberts's world now—we all just rent space there. When she expressly disavowed President Obama's view that "empathy" is the most important quality a judge brings to the bench, Judge Sotomayor made it clear that—at least for the foreseeable future—we won't be hearing about empathy, real-life experiences, or noble champions of the downtrodden in connection with future nominations.
We probably won't hear much about evolving standards of decency or living constitutions either; Sotomayor's Constitution evidently looks a lot like Antonin Scalia's, old and "immutable." Some liberals were horrified.
What does that mean in terms of Obama's next pick or picks? Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a conservative judicial advocacy group, told The New York Times that the goalposts have now shifted significantly: because the nominee portrayed "herself as someone who is bound by the rules that conservatives have been articulating for so many years," if Obama's next judicial picks hold even slightly less mainstream views, Republicans "now can say, 'You don't meet the Sotomayor test.' "
That would certainly weed out a good many names from the Obama shortlists circulated in the weeks after David Souter's retirement. Potential nominees like Kathleen Sullivan, Harold Koh, and even Cass Sunstein may not be able to meet this new Sotomayor standard. Indeed, anyone who has ever advocated a judicial strike zone any larger than the size of a walnut now looks to be shockingly controversial.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/208123Personally, I think she supported this argument well but no matter how liberal the view it is always an application of the law, not the creation of it. Jesus, the conservatives have everyone spouting that BS.
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