Why shouldn't a judge on the United States Supreme Court use her personal knowlege as gained by life experience as one component of what goes into making decisions?
Conservatives claim to be 'strict constructionists,' regarding the Constitution and claim that judges should relate everything back to it (well, except for the fourth amendment, the fifth if accused of a drug crime and the sixth regarding Jose Padilla, and portions of the first, also not Article 4, Section 1 as relates to marriages performed in New England states.) They blithely preach the Constitutional gospel like it is the answer to all life's questions, even though the founding fathers themselves took pains to make it clear that it only served as a guideline. For example, conservatives love to remind you that there is no explicit right to privacy in the Constitution. There doesn't have to be, thanks to the ninth amendment which explicitly states that the fact that a right is not enumerated in the Constitution does NOT construe that there is no such right. It's up to judges then to enumerate what additional rights the ninth amendment refers to and more than 90 years ago they decided that privacy was one of those rights.
Obviously to conservatives though these apparent contradictions of their dogma with the Constitution are mere inconveniences. According to them, Ben Franklin and John Adams must have agreed (and agreed with their view) on medicinal marijuana and funding for English learner classes, it's in there if you look hard enough. And then see what you want to see.
Only problem is, if it was that easy the case wouldn't make it to the Supreme Court in the first place. If the Constitution clearly spelled it out then you wouldn't even need judges at all, just a bubble sheet with questions about the case on it and a computerized flowchart.
The cases that the SCOTUS even accepts have been appealed all the way up through the process precisely because there are often contradictory Constitutional provisions, clauses or amendment which can be construed as favorable to either side. In other cases there is simply no Constitutional precedent at all.
In these cases, why isn't it apropos for a judge to use all sources available to arrive at a decision, including her own experiences? The Constitution may not provide a clear enough answer to a problem that was not even conceived of two centuries ago, and in that case the judge has to have something to go on, be it her own judgements, international law or whatever else. So why make it a bad thing to use her best judgement?
Showing posts with label Sonia Sotomayor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sonia Sotomayor. Show all posts
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
McConnell way off on Sotomayor timeline
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was a little upset that Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) scheduled the confirmation hearing for Sonia Sotomayor to begin on July 13. McConnell wants to do it in September.
Fair enough, he wants more time to dig for dirt and/or drag it out in order to clog up the calendar and slow down other Democratic agenda items, especially health care overhaul. I don't blame him for wanting to do that, as the minority leader he's expected to try and do things like that. Harry Reid would want the same thing if their shoes were reversed.
But McConnell, never satisfied with just making his case, told a bit of a nose-puller. He said that Sotomayor's proposed nomination timeline would be the shortest in recent memory.
Yes, that's what he said.
They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest record in recent memory,
Recall that Sotomayor was nominated on May 25. So if her nomination were processed through the committee and voted on all on the same day, July 13, her timeline would be 49 days. But in fact the hearing, committee vote, and then floor debate and vote by the full Senate will take a couple of weeks beyond that, so figure her timeline will actually be about 60 days. However, whether you figure 49 days or about 60 days, if you read further down in the link we find that it would be very typical of what these things seem to take:
• Samuel Alito: 70 days
• John Roberts: Seven days after announced as chief justice replacement; 55 days after initial nomination
• Stephen Breyer: 60 days
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 36 days
• Clarence Thomas: 71 days
• David Souter: 52 days
• Anthony Kennedy: 33 days
• Robert Bork: 76 days
• Antonin Scalia: 49 days
• William Rehnquist: 42 days
• Sandra Day O'Connor: 64 days
• John Paul Stevens: 10 days
• Rehnquist (nominated by former President Nixon to replace Associate Justice John Harlan): 13 days
What would be unusually long would be if the Senate did wait until after the August recess and begin the hearing when they return after Labor Day, probably the next day, September 8. If that were the date the hearing began, the timeline would be a minimum of 106 days and more likely close to 120.
Well, if the facts are not on your side, apparently Mitch McConnell thinks the way to fix that problem is to make up some new facts.
Fair enough, he wants more time to dig for dirt and/or drag it out in order to clog up the calendar and slow down other Democratic agenda items, especially health care overhaul. I don't blame him for wanting to do that, as the minority leader he's expected to try and do things like that. Harry Reid would want the same thing if their shoes were reversed.
But McConnell, never satisfied with just making his case, told a bit of a nose-puller. He said that Sotomayor's proposed nomination timeline would be the shortest in recent memory.
Yes, that's what he said.
They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest record in recent memory,
Recall that Sotomayor was nominated on May 25. So if her nomination were processed through the committee and voted on all on the same day, July 13, her timeline would be 49 days. But in fact the hearing, committee vote, and then floor debate and vote by the full Senate will take a couple of weeks beyond that, so figure her timeline will actually be about 60 days. However, whether you figure 49 days or about 60 days, if you read further down in the link we find that it would be very typical of what these things seem to take:
• Samuel Alito: 70 days
• John Roberts: Seven days after announced as chief justice replacement; 55 days after initial nomination
• Stephen Breyer: 60 days
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 36 days
• Clarence Thomas: 71 days
• David Souter: 52 days
• Anthony Kennedy: 33 days
• Robert Bork: 76 days
• Antonin Scalia: 49 days
• William Rehnquist: 42 days
• Sandra Day O'Connor: 64 days
• John Paul Stevens: 10 days
• Rehnquist (nominated by former President Nixon to replace Associate Justice John Harlan): 13 days
What would be unusually long would be if the Senate did wait until after the August recess and begin the hearing when they return after Labor Day, probably the next day, September 8. If that were the date the hearing began, the timeline would be a minimum of 106 days and more likely close to 120.
Well, if the facts are not on your side, apparently Mitch McConnell thinks the way to fix that problem is to make up some new facts.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Newt's latest attack on Sotomayor: Same as the last one, except with an appeal to nazis and klansmen
Last week Newt Gingrich referred to Judge Sotomayor as a racist. That didn't sit very well with his fellow Republicans, so he took the word back.
Then today on CBS's 'Face the Nation,' Newt added an extra syllable.
He called her a 'racialist,' apparently having read an anti-Sotomayor article in the right-wing National Review by Kathryn Jean Lopez that appeared last Wednesday.
To the uninformed it might have sounded like he was calling her a racist again, and in fact he was, but with a clear message by using a coded term for it.
If you look into the word, 'racialist,' it isn't just a mispronunciation (though its origin is that it is the British term for the word, 'racist.')
If you go to various white supremacist sites you'll see that they've been using the term as an alternative to 'racist' for years, such as on this neo-nazi website or this transcript of an interview from 'the Klan Show' on White Pride TV.
Among committed white supremacists the term 'racialist' is used and recognized by each other as meaning, 'racist' and in particular 'white nationalist' but being in less common usage (though Newt seems to want to change that) it is more specific to the extreme right.
Now, I can understand how Newt recognizes that the Republican Party's base of old, white conservative fundamentalists is declining and he needs to reach out beyond the party's collapsing tent and bring some new people inside, but I don't think he will save the GOP if the people he's reaching out to are skinheads, nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Then today on CBS's 'Face the Nation,' Newt added an extra syllable.
He called her a 'racialist,' apparently having read an anti-Sotomayor article in the right-wing National Review by Kathryn Jean Lopez that appeared last Wednesday.
To the uninformed it might have sounded like he was calling her a racist again, and in fact he was, but with a clear message by using a coded term for it.
If you look into the word, 'racialist,' it isn't just a mispronunciation (though its origin is that it is the British term for the word, 'racist.')
If you go to various white supremacist sites you'll see that they've been using the term as an alternative to 'racist' for years, such as on this neo-nazi website or this transcript of an interview from 'the Klan Show' on White Pride TV.
Among committed white supremacists the term 'racialist' is used and recognized by each other as meaning, 'racist' and in particular 'white nationalist' but being in less common usage (though Newt seems to want to change that) it is more specific to the extreme right.
Now, I can understand how Newt recognizes that the Republican Party's base of old, white conservative fundamentalists is declining and he needs to reach out beyond the party's collapsing tent and bring some new people inside, but I don't think he will save the GOP if the people he's reaching out to are skinheads, nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Rush needs a king-sized sheet. With eyeholes.
Rush Limbaugh today called Sonia Sotomayor a 'racist.'
Yeah, Limbaugh. I guess he would know a bit about racism if he could listen to his own show.
Let's look a bit at what Rush has said, shall we?
As we well know, in 2003 Limbaugh got himself kicked off 'Monday Night Football' for saying that the media 'overrated' Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because 'they want to see a black quarterback succeed.' Never mind that this bit of idiocy came fifteen years after Doug Williams had led the Washington Redskins to a 42-10 rout over Denver in Super Bowl XXII and ended with an exclamation point any debate about whether black quarterbacks could succeed in the NFL, except apparently for racists like Limbaugh.
Rush apparently hadn't learned from the McNabb comment, because on Monday, February 5, 2007 (the day after Indianapolis beat Chicago in the Super Bowl) he made virtually identical comments, saying that the media had dumped all over Bears quarterback Rex Grossman the week before because 'they wanted a white quarterback to fail.' Never mind of course that the media had described Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning in glowing terms the week before, or the fact that Manning is every bit as white as Grossman, or that the performances of the two in the Super Bowl showed that the media was absolutely right, it's obvious that Rush looked at the media coverage of the bumbling Grossman and decided that they were singling him out for being white.
Last year during the campaign, Rush loved playing a song by satirist Paul Shanklin about Barack Obama called "Barack the Magic Negro." You may recall that Chip Saltsman was forced to withdraw his candidacy for head of the RNC not long after that because he sent out a CD with that very same song on it, and he got called on it's content. He continued to harp on the theme that Barack Obama would never have gotten where he was without being black (when did being black suddenly start to help you get elected to high office? There are still enough racists around that it's a definite handicap for many candidates, though fortunately their numbers have declined to the point where it is even possible for someone like Obama to get elected.) I am a liberal Democrat and I cast my vote very happily for Barack Obama last November, but I find it offensive that Rush is telling me that the only reason was because he was black (I guess presuming that if the Democrats had nominated someone else then all us liberals would suddenly have switched to vote for Republicans.) Dream on, Rush.
Then, when General Colin Powell, after weighing carefully the reactions of the two candidates to the economic crisis, endorsed Obama, Rush said it is all about race. This is a sad, sad commentary that he sees a black man endorse another black man and assumes that it is because of skin color (sorry, but according to the polls, the big reshuffle of the deck last election came right then, following the failure of Lehman Brothers bank and the events that followed; if Powell was convinced that week to pick Obama over McCain then he was just one of millions of Americans.) For that matter, one out of every eight Americans is black. So to assume that every time one black person does something for another black person the only reason is because the person is black is as ridiculous as it is insulting.
Those are Rush quotes that I remember.
Some undated ones, but beauts are at this link.
The worst one is:
You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.
You know, for Rush to call anyone racist, I'd say it would be like the pot calling the kettle black, but in this case the pot is lily white, and could easily be covered by a sheet.
Yeah, Limbaugh. I guess he would know a bit about racism if he could listen to his own show.
Let's look a bit at what Rush has said, shall we?
As we well know, in 2003 Limbaugh got himself kicked off 'Monday Night Football' for saying that the media 'overrated' Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because 'they want to see a black quarterback succeed.' Never mind that this bit of idiocy came fifteen years after Doug Williams had led the Washington Redskins to a 42-10 rout over Denver in Super Bowl XXII and ended with an exclamation point any debate about whether black quarterbacks could succeed in the NFL, except apparently for racists like Limbaugh.
Rush apparently hadn't learned from the McNabb comment, because on Monday, February 5, 2007 (the day after Indianapolis beat Chicago in the Super Bowl) he made virtually identical comments, saying that the media had dumped all over Bears quarterback Rex Grossman the week before because 'they wanted a white quarterback to fail.' Never mind of course that the media had described Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning in glowing terms the week before, or the fact that Manning is every bit as white as Grossman, or that the performances of the two in the Super Bowl showed that the media was absolutely right, it's obvious that Rush looked at the media coverage of the bumbling Grossman and decided that they were singling him out for being white.
Last year during the campaign, Rush loved playing a song by satirist Paul Shanklin about Barack Obama called "Barack the Magic Negro." You may recall that Chip Saltsman was forced to withdraw his candidacy for head of the RNC not long after that because he sent out a CD with that very same song on it, and he got called on it's content. He continued to harp on the theme that Barack Obama would never have gotten where he was without being black (when did being black suddenly start to help you get elected to high office? There are still enough racists around that it's a definite handicap for many candidates, though fortunately their numbers have declined to the point where it is even possible for someone like Obama to get elected.) I am a liberal Democrat and I cast my vote very happily for Barack Obama last November, but I find it offensive that Rush is telling me that the only reason was because he was black (I guess presuming that if the Democrats had nominated someone else then all us liberals would suddenly have switched to vote for Republicans.) Dream on, Rush.
Then, when General Colin Powell, after weighing carefully the reactions of the two candidates to the economic crisis, endorsed Obama, Rush said it is all about race. This is a sad, sad commentary that he sees a black man endorse another black man and assumes that it is because of skin color (sorry, but according to the polls, the big reshuffle of the deck last election came right then, following the failure of Lehman Brothers bank and the events that followed; if Powell was convinced that week to pick Obama over McCain then he was just one of millions of Americans.) For that matter, one out of every eight Americans is black. So to assume that every time one black person does something for another black person the only reason is because the person is black is as ridiculous as it is insulting.
Those are Rush quotes that I remember.
Some undated ones, but beauts are at this link.
The worst one is:
You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.
You know, for Rush to call anyone racist, I'd say it would be like the pot calling the kettle black, but in this case the pot is lily white, and could easily be covered by a sheet.
Ebullient about Sonia!
President Obama has made his first Supreme Court pick, Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. And it's a great choice.
The one point that Republicans have is that her compelling personal story-- raised by a single mother in a tenement in the Bronx and doing well enough in school to earn her own way into Princeton University-- is irrelevant to how qualified she is as a judge.
So let's focus on how qualified she is as a judge. The answer is very. Academically, there is no question about her intellect. Sotomayor graduated Summa cum Laude, at the top of her class at Princeton. Then she went on to Yale Law School and earned her law degree.
After school she earned a reputation as a tough and effective prosecutor, which led to her appointment to the federal bench eighteen years ago by President George H.W. Bush. Later she was appointed to the second circuit court by President Clinton, and has served on that court-- one step below the Supreme Court for more than a decade.
Conservatives tried to kneecap Sotomayor early on in the process. They sent hitman Jeffrey Rosen, who wrote a scathing critique, all based on 'anonymous sources.' Those anonymous sources questioned her intelligence, apparently following after Karl Rove's tactics of attacking someone's strength first. Only Rosen failed miserably, since he couldn't find anyone willing to put their name on the record so it ends up looking like a bunch of unsubstantiated innuendo. For all you can tell, Rosen's 'anonymous source' might have been himself.
They will bring up Sotomayor's comments in the past suggesting that judicial decisions should also be made with a view as to their impact on those directly affected and on others. This is a good thing however. As a baseball fan, I am grateful that Sotomayor considered the interests of fans and of the public when she issued a ruling in 1995 to force players and owners back to the negotiating table. Baseball, as I've noted on several occasions, still has not recovered as "America's pastime" (in third place in most measures of fan popularity behind football and basketball, and not all that far ahead of NASCAR.) Sotomayor is the reason why baseball resumed in 1995 at all, and in retrospect it is clear that she made the right decision.
They will likely bring up the case of Ricci vs. DiStefano, the New Haven, CT case in which the results of a test were thrown out by the city. Conservatives are criticizing Sotomayor for being a member of a three judge panel which sided with the city and ruled against the plaintiff. However, the fact that the case even worked its way up to the second circuit should be proof that it was never the slam-dunk case conservatives seem to believe to begin with, so if she doesn't agree with them then she is not the first. I doubt it will be a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court either (though it will be interesting to see how David Souter casts his vote on the case.) If Sotomayor and her colleagues on the panel can be faulted it is for not being more explicit in their opinion, but not forgoing a lengthy opinion in a case which is decided by a panel is by no means unusual (and the justice who penned the opinion in the case was one of the other panel members anyway.)
As far as her position on the court, keep in mind that Souter is considered part of the court's liberal wing anyway. We have essentially a 4-1-4 split on the court-- four liberals, four conservatives and Anthony Kennedy the guy everyone is trying to convince. The only way that Sotomayor really helps the liberal wing is that we are replacing Souter, a guy who hated every minute of his work on the Supreme Court, with a justice who is enthusiastic about the opportunity and at 54 will probably be on the court for a long time. The two justices with serious health issues, Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, remain on the court.
In fact, while Sotomayor is certainly liberal on many issues, she isn't necessarily always liberal. In her only ruling on abortion in fact, she backed the Bush administration's anti-abortion stance in dismissing the suit on the part of abortion rights groups to force the administration to reverse the so-called 'Mexico City rule' and provide funds for foreign organizations that counseled abortion. Sotomayor ruled on the case in 2002 that the government had the freedom to direct U.S. funds to or not to foreign interests. In another ruling that is at odds with liberal orthodoxy she struck down a law used by the city of White Plains, NY to ban religious displays in a city park. So clearly she will have a few surprises in store, though I expect that she will probably be about as liberal as David Souter was (a justice who surprised his Republican backers twenty years ago.)
On the other hand, I don't want a pure doctrinaire liberal either. I want someone who thinks things through and one hallmark of that is occasional unpredictability. All in all, I am very happy with President Obama's choice.
The one point that Republicans have is that her compelling personal story-- raised by a single mother in a tenement in the Bronx and doing well enough in school to earn her own way into Princeton University-- is irrelevant to how qualified she is as a judge.
So let's focus on how qualified she is as a judge. The answer is very. Academically, there is no question about her intellect. Sotomayor graduated Summa cum Laude, at the top of her class at Princeton. Then she went on to Yale Law School and earned her law degree.
After school she earned a reputation as a tough and effective prosecutor, which led to her appointment to the federal bench eighteen years ago by President George H.W. Bush. Later she was appointed to the second circuit court by President Clinton, and has served on that court-- one step below the Supreme Court for more than a decade.
Conservatives tried to kneecap Sotomayor early on in the process. They sent hitman Jeffrey Rosen, who wrote a scathing critique, all based on 'anonymous sources.' Those anonymous sources questioned her intelligence, apparently following after Karl Rove's tactics of attacking someone's strength first. Only Rosen failed miserably, since he couldn't find anyone willing to put their name on the record so it ends up looking like a bunch of unsubstantiated innuendo. For all you can tell, Rosen's 'anonymous source' might have been himself.
They will bring up Sotomayor's comments in the past suggesting that judicial decisions should also be made with a view as to their impact on those directly affected and on others. This is a good thing however. As a baseball fan, I am grateful that Sotomayor considered the interests of fans and of the public when she issued a ruling in 1995 to force players and owners back to the negotiating table. Baseball, as I've noted on several occasions, still has not recovered as "America's pastime" (in third place in most measures of fan popularity behind football and basketball, and not all that far ahead of NASCAR.) Sotomayor is the reason why baseball resumed in 1995 at all, and in retrospect it is clear that she made the right decision.
They will likely bring up the case of Ricci vs. DiStefano, the New Haven, CT case in which the results of a test were thrown out by the city. Conservatives are criticizing Sotomayor for being a member of a three judge panel which sided with the city and ruled against the plaintiff. However, the fact that the case even worked its way up to the second circuit should be proof that it was never the slam-dunk case conservatives seem to believe to begin with, so if she doesn't agree with them then she is not the first. I doubt it will be a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court either (though it will be interesting to see how David Souter casts his vote on the case.) If Sotomayor and her colleagues on the panel can be faulted it is for not being more explicit in their opinion, but not forgoing a lengthy opinion in a case which is decided by a panel is by no means unusual (and the justice who penned the opinion in the case was one of the other panel members anyway.)
As far as her position on the court, keep in mind that Souter is considered part of the court's liberal wing anyway. We have essentially a 4-1-4 split on the court-- four liberals, four conservatives and Anthony Kennedy the guy everyone is trying to convince. The only way that Sotomayor really helps the liberal wing is that we are replacing Souter, a guy who hated every minute of his work on the Supreme Court, with a justice who is enthusiastic about the opportunity and at 54 will probably be on the court for a long time. The two justices with serious health issues, Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, remain on the court.
In fact, while Sotomayor is certainly liberal on many issues, she isn't necessarily always liberal. In her only ruling on abortion in fact, she backed the Bush administration's anti-abortion stance in dismissing the suit on the part of abortion rights groups to force the administration to reverse the so-called 'Mexico City rule' and provide funds for foreign organizations that counseled abortion. Sotomayor ruled on the case in 2002 that the government had the freedom to direct U.S. funds to or not to foreign interests. In another ruling that is at odds with liberal orthodoxy she struck down a law used by the city of White Plains, NY to ban religious displays in a city park. So clearly she will have a few surprises in store, though I expect that she will probably be about as liberal as David Souter was (a justice who surprised his Republican backers twenty years ago.)
On the other hand, I don't want a pure doctrinaire liberal either. I want someone who thinks things through and one hallmark of that is occasional unpredictability. All in all, I am very happy with President Obama's choice.
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