President Barack Obama named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, praising her as “an inspiring woman” with both the intellect and compassion to interpret the Constitution wisely.
While it’s unclear exactly when Sonia Sotomayor will have her Senate confirmation hearing, Senate Republicans are already sending the message that they will not be rushed through the process, opening the the possibility that she may not confirmed before the Supreme Court opens in October.
In his written statement today, Republican Judiciary Committee member Jon Kyl stressed the need for Republicans to have plenty of time to review Sotomayor’s record. Kyl cited examples from past Supreme Court confirmations under a Republican-controlled Senate where the then-Democratic minority was afforded “ample time” to review the nominee.
He says the entire process for each of the two most recent nominee took between two and three months to complete.
The following statement was released by the White House:
Sonia Sotomayor has served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since October 1998. She has been hailed as “one of the ablest federal judges currently sitting” for her thoughtful opinions,i and as “a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity” for her ascent to the federal bench from an upbringing in a South Bronx housing project.
Her American story and three decade career in nearly every aspect of the law provide Judge Sotomayor with unique qualifications to be the next Supreme Court Justice. She is a distinguished graduate of two of America’s leading universities. She has been a big-city prosecutor and a corporate litigator. Before she was promoted to the Second Circuit by President Clinton, she was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush. She replaces Justice Souter as the only Justice with experience as a trial judge.
Judge Sotomayor served 11 years on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most demanding circuits in the country, and has handed down decisions on a range of complex legal and constitutional issues. If confirmed, Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years. Judge Richard C. Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee to the Second Circuit, said “Sonia is an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind. She brings a wealth of knowledge and hard work to all her endeavors on our court. It is both a pleasure and an honor to serve with her.”
In addition to her distinguished judicial service, Judge Sotomayor is a Lecturer at Columbia University Law School and was also an adjunct professor at New York University Law School until 2007.
An American Story
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has lived the American dream. Born to a Puerto Rican family, she grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her parents moved to New York during World War II – her mother served in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps during the war. Her father, a factory worker with a third-grade education, died when Sotomayor was nine years old. Her mother, a nurse, then raised Sotomayor and her younger brother, Juan, now a physician in Syracuse. After her father’s death, Sotomayor turned to books for solace, and it was her new found love of Nancy Drew that inspired a love of reading and learning, a path that ultimately led her to the law.
Most importantly, at an early age, her mother instilled in Sotomayor and her brother a belief in the power of education. Driven by an indefatigable work ethic, and rising to the challenge of managing a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes, Sotomayor excelled in school. Sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York. She first heard about the Ivy League from her high school debate coach, Ken Moy, who attended Princeton University, and she soon followed in his footsteps after winning a scholarship.
At Princeton, she continued to excel, graduating summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. One of Sotomayor’s former Yale Law School classmates, Robert Klonoff (now Dean of Lewis & Clark Law School), remembers her intellectual toughness from law school: “She would stand up for herself and not be intimidated by anyone.” [Washington Post, 5/7/09]
A Champion of the Law
Over a distinguished career that spans three decades, Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system – yielding a depth of experience and a breadth of perspectives that will be invaluable – and is currently not represented — on our highest court. New York City District Attorney Morgenthau recently praised Sotomayor as an “able champion of the law” who would be “highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character could be assets.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/9/09]
A Fearless and Effective Prosecutor
Fresh out of Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor became an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan in 1979, where she tried dozens of criminal cases over five years. Spending nearly every day in the court room, her prosecutorial work typically involved “street crimes,” such as murders and robberies, as well as child abuse, police misconduct, and fraud cases. Robert Morgenthau, the person who hired Judge Sotomayor, has described her as a “fearless and effective prosecutor.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/9/09] She was cocounsel in the “Tarzan Murderer” case, which convicted a murderer to 67 and ½ years to life in prison, and was sole counsel in a multiple-defendant case involving a Manhattan housing project shooting between rival family groups.
A Corporate Litigator
She entered private practice in 1984, becoming a partner in 1988 at the firm Pavia and Harcourt. She was a general civil litigator involved in all facets of commercial work including, real estate, employment, banking, contracts, and agency law. In addition, her practice had a significant concentration in intellectual property law, including trademark, copyright and unfair competition issues. Her typical clients were significant corporations doing international business. The managing partner who hired her, George Pavia, remembers being instantly impressed with the young Sonia Sotomayor when he hired her in 1984, noting that “she was just ideal for us in terms of her background and training.” [Washington Post, May 7, 2009]
A Sharp and Fearless Trial Judge
Her judicial service began in October 1992 with her appointment to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush. Still in her 30s, she was the youngest member of the court. From 1992 to 1998, she presided over roughly 450 cases. As a trial judge, she earned a reputation as a sharp and fearless jurist who does not let powerful interests bully her into departing from the rule of law. In 1995, for example, she issued an injunction against Major League Baseball owners, effectively ending a baseball strike that had become the longest work stoppage in professional sports history and had caused the cancellation of the World Series the previous fall. She was widely lauded for saving baseball. Claude Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined “the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams.”
A Tough, Fair and Thoughtful Jurist
President Clinton appointed Judge Sotomayor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998. She is the first Latina to serve on that court, and has participated in over 3000 panel decisions, authoring roughly 400 published opinions. Sitting on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has tackled a range of questions: from difficult issues of constitutional law, to complex procedural matters, to lawsuits involving complicated business organizations. In this context, Sotomayor is widely admired as a judge with a sophisticated grasp of legal doctrine. “’She appreciates the complexity of issues,’ said Stephen L. Carter, a Yale professor who teaches some of her opinions in his classes. Confronted with a tough case, Carter said, ‘she doesn’t leap at its throat but reasons to get to the bottom of issues.’” For example, in United States v. Quattrone, Judge Sotomayor concluded that the trial judge had erred by forbidding the release of jurors’ names to the press, concluding after carefully weighing the competing concerns that the trial judge’s concerns for a speedy and orderly trial must give way to the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press.
Sotomayor also has keen awareness of the law’s impact on everyday life. Active in oral arguments, she works tirelessly to probe both the factual details and the legal doctrines in the cases before her and to arrive at decisions that are faithful to both. She understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts. For example, In United States v. Reimer, Judge Sotomayor wrote an opinion revoking the US citizenship for a man charged with working for the Nazis in World War II Poland, guarding concentration camps and helping empty the Jewish ghettos. And in Lin v. Gonzales and a series of similar cases, she ordered renewed consideration of the asylum claims of Chinese women who experienced or were threatened with forced birth control, evincing in her opinions a keen awareness of those women’s plights.
Judge Sotomayor’s appreciation of the real-world implications of judicial rulings is paralleled by her sensible practicality in evaluating the actions of law enforcement officers. For example, in United States v. Falso, the defendant was convicted of possessing child pornography after FBI agents searched his home with a warrant. The warrant should not have been issued, but the agents did not know that, and Judge Sotomayor wrote for the court that the officers’ good faith justified using the evidence they found. Similarly in United States v. Santa, Judge Sotomayor ruled that when police search a suspect based on a mistaken belief that there is a valid arrest warrant out on him, evidence found during the search should not be suppressed. Ten years later, in Herring v. United States, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion. In her 1997 confirmation hearing, Sotomayor spoke of her judicial philosophy, saying” I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.” Her record on the Second Circuit holds true to that statement. For example, in Hankins v. Lyght, she argued in dissent that the federal government risks “an unconstitutional trespass” if it attempts to dictate to religious organizations who they can or cannot hire or dismiss as spiritual leaders. Since joining the Second Circuit, Sotomayor has honored the Constitution, the rule of law, and justice, often forging consensus and winning conservative colleagues to her point of view.
A Commitment to Community
Judge Sotomayor is deeply committed to her family, to her co-workers, and to her community. Judge Sotomayor is a doting aunt to her brother Juan’s three children and an attentive godmother to five more. She still speaks to her mother, who now lives in Florida, every day. At the courthouse, Judge Sotomayor helped found the collegiality committee to foster stronger personal relationships among members of the court. Seizing an opportunity to lead others on the path to success, she recruited judges to join her in inviting young women to the courthouse on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and mentors young students from troubled neighborhoods Her favorite project, however, is the Development School for Youth program, which sponsors workshops for inner city high school students. Every semester, approximately 70 students attend 16 weekly workshops that are designed to teach them how to function in a work setting. The workshop leaders include investment bankers, corporate executives and Judge Sotomayor, who conducts a workshop on the law for 25 to 35 students. She uses as her vehicle the trial of Goldilocks and recruits six lawyers to help her. The students play various roles, including the parts of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, Goldilocks and the jurors, and in the process they get to experience openings, closings, direct and cross-examinations. In addition to the workshop experience, each student is offered a summer job by one of the corporate sponsors. The experience is rewarding for the lawyers and exciting for the students, commented Judge Sotomayor, as “it opens up possibilities that the students never dreamed of before.” [Federal Bar Council News, Sept./Oct./Nov. 2005, p.20] This is one of many ways that Judge Sotomayor gives back to her community and inspires young people to achieve their dreams.
She has served as a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and was formerly on the Boards of Directors of the New York Mortgage Agency, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
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The article released by the White House sounds find and dandy, but this piece of information from a Yahoo! report is troubling, to say the least.
“In one of her most notable decisions, as an appellate judge she sided last year with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case brought by white firefighters. The city threw out results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough. Coincidentally, that case is now before the Supreme Court.”
veryinteresting – Have you read the case?
#2, please volunteer what you believe the circumstances in the case were that lead to Sotomayer’s ruling being fair to the candidates who earned high scores, or specifically, the candidate who had the highest score.
veryinteresting – Here is an April ABA News report on the case. What specifically do you find “…troubling, to say the least?”
———————–
Supreme Court to Consider Firefighters’ Reverse Bias Claims
Posted Apr 10, 2009, 07:33 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider later this month when the government can use race as a factor in its hiring and promotion decisions.
The reverse discrimination suit, Ricci v. DeStefano, was filed by white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who passed a promotional exam, only to have the results thrown out because no blacks got top scores, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The plaintiffs claim violation of constitutional equal protection guarantees and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The case is scheduled for argument on April 22. It will give the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. an opportunity to issue its first major decision on racial discrimination in employment, the New York Times reports.
The Los Angeles Times says the court’s decision could change hiring and promotion policies for public employees—and possibly for private workers.
In a 2007 case involving education, Roberts wrote the majority opinion holding that public schools improperly used race to decide school assignments. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote.
The Obama administration filed a brief supporting New Haven, saying the city could throw out the test results if they had “gross exclusionary effects on minorities,” according to the Los Angeles Times. About 37 percent of New Haven’s population is black, according to 2000 censure figures. But 32 percent of the city’s entry-level firefighters are black and 15 percent of supervisory firefighters are black, according to 2007 figures.
A federal judge sided with the city, saying no one was harmed since no one was promoted, the New York Times story says. A panel of the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, and the en banc appeals court refused a rehearing on a 7-6 vote.
The case highlights a conflict in Title VII that bars employers from using hiring and promotional standards that have a disparate impact on the basis of race, the Los Angeles Times story says. Workplace Prof Blog puts the conundrum this way: “Is a decision not to create a disparate impact really race discrimination in disguise?”
veryinteresting – If the standard is “gross exclusionary effect” I have no problem with it – legally, all it does is shift the burden to the proponents of the test to show that the test was fair.
The shifting of the burden in racial or ethnic discrimination cases is nothing new – For example, it is conventional law if, say, 30% of available accountants in a labor pool are Jews, but an employer has only 10% Jewish accountants – in a discrimination claim brought by a Jew those figures would shift the burden to the employer to show how its hiring practices did not in fact discriminate against Jews.
After reading the PR spin from the White House, we, finally, get a small glimmer of the real truth at the very end of the statement:
“She has served as a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and was formerly on the Boards of Directors of the New York Mortgage Agency, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.”
She is a Liberal activist, advancing the cause of affirmative action and discrimination against white people.
As for her “superb qualifications,” here is what Jeff Rosen, of the Liberal magazine The New Republic, said about the subject:
“The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,” as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. “She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren’t penetrating and don’t get to the heart of the issue.” (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, “Will you please stop talking and let them talk?”)
And, finally, here is a direct quote that gives us a bit of the flavor of this arrogant divorcee:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”
Wolffman, I did not say her decision was erroneous. I am sure she had to support her decision. And, you certainly threw a lot up against the wall which tells me you agree with a decision that suits an agenda and not justice.
Perhaps one can conclude that if the test for the job was racially biased, then the job itself was racially biased. No? Do we do away with the job? Restructure the job to suit the race of any particular candidate? See? We are getting into an arena that proves the decision was agenda driven.
So, in conclusion, while there was A support for the decision, it, and YOU, went outside the scope of the lawsuit and circumvented answering just how justice was served for the person who scored the highest score for promotion only to have his test score thrown out because it allegedly had questions only us white people knew how to answer.
Hmmmm.
Justice was not served, but an agenda was.
For the benefit of “Wolffman” nd “VeryInteresting,” Here is an analysis of her sloppy and careless legal “reasoning” by her colleague on the court:
“U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sotomayor issued an order that affirmed Arterton’s decision, issuing a one-paragraph judgment that called Arterton’s ruling “thorough, thoughtful, and well reasoned,”
But according to dissenting Judge Jose Cabranes, the single-paragraph order issued by Sotomayor and her colleagues ignored over 1,800 pages of testimony and more than an hour of argument–ignoring the facts of the case.
“(T)he parties submitted briefs of 86 pages each and a six-volume joint appendix of over 1,800 pages; plaintiffs’ reply brief was over thirty pages long,” Cabranes wrote.
“(O)ral argument, on December 10, 2007, lasted over an hour,” Cabranes explained, adding that more than two months after oral arguments, Sotomayor and the majority panel upheld the lower court in a summary order “containing a single substantive paragraph.”
Cabranes criticized Sotomayor and the majority for not explaining why they had sided with the city in their new opinion.
“This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit,” Cabranes wrote in his dissent.
Judge Cabranes also said that Sotomayor’s opinion failed to address the constitutional issues of the case, saying the majority had ignored the facts of the case as well.
“It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case,” the judge criticized.
“This Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal,” Judge Cabranes concluded. “If the Ricci plaintiffs are to receive such an opinion from a reviewing court they must now look to the Supreme Court. Their claims are worthy of that review.”
On the cases dealing with our (i.e. frum Jews) rights, she has generally supported an interpretation that supports our community — which is really more important to me than the ethnicity of the a department which almost by definition never provides employment to frum Jews.
To apekurma (no. 9):
You wrote: “she has generally supported an interpretation that supports our community” Please specify.
By the way, “affirmative action” has destroyed the livelihoods of countless Jewish working people, who were sidelined, in order to give preferential treatment to certified “minorities.”
Ay ya, ay ya, ay yay! Reading all of you lawyers fighting it out is making me dizzy. I only hope you are able to support your wives and children adequately in these hard economic times.
veryinteresting
Justice vs Agenda? You are being much too complicated, as the principles are very straight forward and uncontroversial. This is not a left vs right ideological issue – The principles involved are elementry civil rights/employment “101” that all administrations have supported for 45 years.
Suppose a well meaning group of executives at a large federally funded firm hires its executive trainees through their established network of friends and churches – now suppose that network in fact, though without ill intent, totally excludes Jews, although Jews make up a sizeable part of the pool of those well qualified to be executive trainees.
The result would be a case of “invidious” discrimination (meaning not not intentional). If challenged in a suit brought by a Jew, the firm would be required to modify its hiring practices to open itself to Jewish candidates.
Similarly, suppose a written employment test has questions based in part on incidents taken from “well known by everybody” popular TV shows. Those who do not own or watch TV, such as most frum Yiodden I know, would be adversely effected – and unless the TV based questions were shown to be really necessary – the employer would have to avoid them.
This IS justice – its long-established American law – not some new fangled left wing agenda. And the questions in the New Haven fire fighters case do not challenge these principles. They go to how they should be applied in nuanced (boring to many) factual situations, and in the particular procedural setting where the employer had not in fact promoted anyone.
As Freud said – Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Whazzamadda Flatbush Bubby – Too intellectually deep for ya?
#10- and if a New York department hire a yeshiva graduate rather than a college graduate, that isn’t “affirmative action” – it seems every other article on YWN is about frum Jews wants the government to do something for us (rather than we doing it ourselves) — that’s also affirmative action.
We are a certified minority. Until the civil rights law, if you weren’t willing to work a full shift (no leaving early Friday, often work on Saturday), you were virtually unemployable except in a frum business. It’s no coincidence that the two African American justices have been our best friends on the Supreme Court. I enjoy working for the goyim and getting a middle class salary, and that’s only possible due to “affirmative action” (which is another way of saying “reasonable accomodation”).
akuperma (no. 14):
YOu make an intersting point. However, I don’t know if it’s true. I believe corporations today make reasonable accomodations for different minorities.
“Affirmative Action” does not mean what you say. It does not mean “reasonable accomodation.”
“Affirmative Action” means that you preferentially hire and promote certified minorities over white people, even if they are less qualified.
In practice, it means “white people need not apply.”–Reverse discrimination.
Lets see…
About 80% of her decisions have been turned over upon appeal by the Supreme Court.
Can someone please explain how a HISPANIC WOMAN Judge could have accomplished so much during EIGHT YEARS OF REAGAN, 4 YEARS OF BUSH 41, and EIGHT YEARS OF BUSH 43 (not to mention 8 years of Clinton thrown in too)?? Something must have been right in the country before the messiah was elected.
She wants to make “policy” as she noted in her speech. The point of a justice is to interpret the Consitution (that would be a document held unfair by the president) and NOT MAKE POLICY.
A Liberal Judge appointed by President Clinton has chastised her IN WRITING.
She has said that she rules on cases based on her background as well as her sex. Why would her personal bias come into play as opposed to the law of the land?
All day long I heard on the radio how this is a wonderful pick because she is a women and a Latino. No one ever bothered saying anything about her record. I guess the best thing about her record is her sex and her race. Doesnt sound like a good resume, does it??
I certainly hope the Republicans as well as many Democrats make noise with this pick.
Mark, does that 80% include the 95% of the times while in 3 judge panels she sided with her fellow republican appointed colleagues? hmm?
17,
As we have seen just because someone is appointed by a republican, it doesnt make them any better of a judge than if they were appointed by a democrat. Seems they lie about their ” right wingness” before being nominated.
Mark,
She’s a former prosecutor (usually is a “law and order” type on actual cases), appointed by the original President Bush. She’s rules against the pro-abortion crowd, and in favor of airlines against passengers. She has a fine academic record (remember, law schools grade blind – so the grades mean something). On cases that have been appealed, she seem to correlate very closely with Justice Souter (the one she is replacing).
It seems the President Obama doesn’t want a radical leftward shift, either reflecting his own ideology or for fear it will distract from his own (big government, what was “tax and spend” but now is “print and spend”) agenda.
She does have a good record in protecting people of faith and religious minorities.
So stop whiming, or you may end up with someone chosen to mobilize “his base”.
This is from Reuters:
“Sotomayor has a long record of rulings in business cases, but experts say her record does not appear to be either particularly liberal or conservative — but rather a patchwork of decisions based more on the merits and facts of the cases than an ideological approach to the law.”
Sounds pretty balanced to me.
Some of you are reflexively and hysterically negative about anything Obama does, with neither thought nor analysis.
Forget it. She is a WOMAN and she is a hispanic. She needs no more qualifications. Thats what I learned today from the drive bys and some of the previous posters here.
shayn zeyt men oys!
#12, Wolffman, Freud was right. But you cant take that tack after all you posted. You are making an assumption that her ruling was valid. My question is how was justice served to those Americans who scored high on the promotion test. The judge, in my view, made a careless ruling based on her own feelings, which has been proven in other cases.
Basically, in this day and age, to substantiate her ruling, we should see sample questions to prove there was bias. I think black and Spanish culture have references that white people dont understand unless they are “down” with street culture. But what kind of questions can be on a job promotion test that only whites would know how to answer?
veryinteresting –
I respectfully suggest (and I mean respectfully) there is a flaw to your logic.
In either of the supposition cases I mentioned yesterday, there would be innocent qualified people who had been hired through a process tainted by discrimination; non-Jews in the first instance, and TV watchers in the second.
Societally, I think thge focus should be on the issue of whether there is actionable discrimination or not; if, and this is a point I cannot address as I do not know enough facts – if the test really was discriminatory, then the results should be discarded. This is true no matter who is the aggrieved class, and no matter who the “innocent victims.”
I do NOT address this to you – but to others here – I think that people see other racial groups benefiting from civil rights remedies, and don’t see anything else – they don’t stop to reflect on the situation being remedied, the wrong being corrected. But then, if it is a Yid benefiting – well, then all is well and as it should be – BUT here too, reflexively, without a care as to the underlying discrimination issue. The only common denominator is rah rah Yidden when we “win” and hate those anti-semiten liberals when “another” wins.
I’d be willing to continue this debate offline – you make me think – I authorize YWN to give you my email.