Will Sotomayor replace Souter?

5/26/09 Update: News just broke that President Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor to the high court later this morning. Should be an interesting confirmation process.


5/1/09 Update: Yesterday's news of Justice David Souter retiring in June got me thinking back to this post. Of course Justice Ginsburg may also choose to retire in June when the current session of the court comes to an end. Interesting to consider that this President HW Bush 1990 supreme court nominee could be replaced by someone that he nominated for a lower court in 1991.


3/14/09: George Stephanopoulos recently posted this observation:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised a few eyebrows today with her prediction that President Barack Obama would "surely" pick a Supreme Court justice "soon." 

Here's my question: what are the chances that Obama DOESN'T pick Sonia Sotomayor? 

In her favor, she was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush. Elevated to the Appeals Court by Bill Clinton. She's a protégé of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and a prosecutor with Robert Morgenthau.  Graduate of Princeton and Yale after growing up in the South Bronx.

And, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Justice on the Supreme Court bench
From what I can tell Judge Sotomayor is a liberal and is pro-choice. I wonder how our "pro-life" senators will vote if she is nominated.. of course we could thank "pro-lifer" George HW Bush for nominating her when he was president.

5 comments:

  1. You have evidence that she had made any "pro-choice" decisions at that time? The news outlets seem to say otherwise. She has actually made some decisions that "benefitted" pro-lifers (I use quotes because she is supposed to be ruling on the law, not on emotions.

    Much of her inflammatory language seems to have come up almost ten years after he appointed her. Her now-famous "a Latina has more feelings than a white man" quote was made in 2001, ten YEARS after he appointed her.

    We'll have to wait and see what trick is up Obama's sleeve, because depend on it, there's a trick somewhere.

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  2. Good call TZ! According to this article Sotomayor is a bit of an unknown and may lean a bit towards the prolife side. Didn't remember seeing much a few months ago when I originally posted about her.

    If she is a bit right of center on this then folks may have underestimated Obama.. guess time will tell.

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  3. I don't underestimate him any farther than I could hit him from here with this ashtray. I think he wanted a "feelings" judge and picked a female Latina very deliberately. Her ability is seriously in question - did you see how many important decisions she has had overturned on appeal?

    Not such a hot choice, and I kind of feel sorry for her - I am afraid her weak record is going to get shredded, and who wants to be told they're not good at their job in front of millions of people?

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  4. Good thoughts TZ. I heard someone say today that they did not think she had the intellectual chops for the SCOTUS. Do you think she will be Obama's Harriet Myers?

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  5. I thought of that. Miers was a bad, bad idea of Bush's (bless his sometimes misplaced loyalty!) because she was so underqualified, but she was so neutral otherwise, she could sink without a trace.

    This is going to be ugly. I KNEW there was a reason that we prayed for our civic leaders and judges each week!

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