Posted by Orin Kerr:
Initial Thoughts on the Sotomayor Pick:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_24-2009_05_30.shtml#1243349566
Two initial thoughts on the Sotomayor pick.
First, it's not a big surprise: Sotomayor has long been thought to
be a possible Supreme Court pick for a Democratic President. Indeed, a
quick google search pulls up some of the stories of how GOP Senators
tried to slow down her nomination to the Second Circuit in 1997-98
precisely because she would be a logical pick to the Supreme Court
someday. For example, [1]here's Neil Lewis in the New York Times on
June 13, 1998:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor seemed like a trouble-free choice when
President Clinton nominated her to an appeals court post a year
ago. Hers was an appealing story: a child from the Bronx housing
projects who went on to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton and
become editor of the Yale Law Journal and then a Federal
prosecutor.
Moreover, she had been a trial judge since 1992, when she was
named to the bench by the last Republican president, George Bush.
But Republican senators have been blocking Judge Sotomayor's
elevation to the appeals court for a highly unusual reason: to make
her less likely to be picked by Mr. Clinton for the Supreme Court,
senior Republican Congressional aides said in interviews.
(To be clear, both parties play this game when they smell a potential
SCOTUS nominee; I point out the 1998 story just to point out that
Sotomayor was always known as a possible pick.)
Second, 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 a court of
appeals and puts in 15 years as a solid federal appellate 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.
References
1.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/13/nyregion/gop-its-eyes-on-high-court-blocks-a-judge.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
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