Judge Sotomayor voted with the majority in 98.2 percent of the 217 constitutional cases in which she participated, dissenting only four times. Moreover, 94 percent of those rulings were unanimous decisions. . . . Republican-appointed judges voted the same way as Judge Sotomayor in 88.2 percent of the cases in which she voted to overturn a government action, and in 94 percent of those in which she voted to overrule a district court or an agency. . . .
Some cases [counted below] were counted twice because more they fell into multiple categories:
* In 46 civil-rights cases, Judge Sotomayor was in the majority in all but two. . . .
* In 44 criminal law cases, she was in the majority every time. . . .
* In 127 cases involving a due-process claim, she was in the majority in all but one. . . .
And in 68 First Amendment cases, she was in the majority in 65.
Every federal circuit court judge is reversed on appeal by the U.S. Supreme Court one in a great while, and ends up in dissent once in a great while. Judge Sotomayor is no exception. But, the numerically very small number of reversals she has experienced and dissents she has written fail to make a case against her confirmation.
Key Republicans have already indicated that they don't plan to filibuster Sotomayor, and in a Senate with 58 Democrats and two Senators who caucus with Democrats, as well as a number of moderate Republicans (two of whom are female New Englanders who could have blocked Sotomayor's appointment to the Circuit Court if they had wished), Sotomayor is a shoe in to be confirmed.
3 comments:
Sotomayor slavishly follows precedent rather than applying common sense interpretation of the law. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that she follows consensus rather than "builds consensus".
Precedent is much more ambiguous in practice than it appears. Reasonable people of very different political persausions often disagree about what it means in the absence of consensus building.
Sotomayor confirmed today in her own words what I've been saying since the day she was nominated, which is that she places court precedent above her own opinions and above the law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/14/AR2009071400992_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009071401130
"'My record shows that at no point or time have I ever permitted my personal views or sympathies to influence an outcome of a case. In every case where I have identified a sympathy, I have articulated it and explained to the litigant why the law requires a different result.'"
"On gun control, Sotomayor said the decision by a panel on which she served that the court's Heller ruling did not apply to states that might want to restrict gun ownership was a simple acknowledgment of what the Supreme Court itself said. Because several cases are pending at the court on whether the Second Amendment applies to states and local governments, rather than just the federal government, Sotomayor said she could not express an opinion."
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