Fair and Balanced: Weighing Sotomayor's Opinions

[Triana]

Sotomayor's trail of opinions paints a picture of a fair-minded, incisive legal scholar who is unafraid to stake out unpopular but legally meritorious positions.

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The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy lost the case, and the Global Gag Rule continued to compromise women's health around the globe until Barack Obama took office.

That outcome disheartened feminists, liberals and reproductive justice advocates, and I wish it had been decided differently. But the decision wasn't necessarily a bad one - and it absolutely should not stop progressive women's rights activists from supporting her nomination.

If anything, CRLP v. Bush highlights precisely why Sotomayor should, in a sane world, be an easy confirmation: She sticks to the rule of law, respects precedent and writes thoughtful and reasoned opinions. She was nominated to the federal district court by George H.W. Bush. Her decisions are left-leaning insofar as she generally seeks to protect Constitutional rights by supporting religious freedom and free speech, and she often sides with the plaintiffs in discrimination cases - hardly "activist" material. But she's not a liberal dream by any stretch. She has some bad First Amendment cases to her name (Doninger v. Niehoff, where she sided with a school that disqualified a student from running for senior class secretary after the student posted a vulgar school-related message on her blog), and some bad Fourth Amendment ones (United States v. Howard, where she held it was constitutional for state troopers to entice suspects away from their cars in order to allow other troopers to search the vehicles for drugs). Those cases, though, are the exceptions rather than the rule; generally, Sotomayor follows a fairly consistent Constitutional philosophy, and errs on the side of maintaining rather than limiting rights.

Given her history, it's hard to grasp why conservatives brand her "a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written," as Wendy E. Long, counsel to the right-wing Judicial Confirmation Network, put it. Sotomayor has clearly and consistently deferred to "the law as written" -- she's considerably less activist and dogmatic than Bush's two Supreme Court appointees, John Roberts and Samual Alito. Unfortunately for conservatives, the law as written does affirm the rights to speak without governmental intervention, to practice your religion freely, to be free from state-sponsored religious exercises, to maintain your privacy, and to retain certain protections even if you are a suspected criminal or a criminal defendant.

Sotomayor has embraced free speech rights even where the speech was abhorrent (an NYPD officer mailing anonymous bigoted and racist materials to charities requesting donations); stood up for victims of race, gender, age and disability discrimination; and dissented when the Second Circuit rejected a challenge to the New York law that disenfranchises convicted felons. She is by most accounts an intellectually gifted, hard-working and highly experienced judge. So while there is unfortunately little to go on with regard to her views on abortion rights, we know that Sotomayor is a smart, capable left-leaning moderate. She's not going to undo years of a conservative court alone but she is highly qualified and undoubtedly progressive.

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http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/05/26/fair-and-balanced-weighing-sotomayors-opinions

[suffragette]

1. Great points

Really gets me thinking about Obama's background in Constitutional law and Sotomayor's record in that area. Makes sense that he would pick her.