Sotomayor

Ed Meese is at it again.

The Reagan-era attorney general, beloved by conservatives but long reviled by many liberals, is playing an important behind-the-scenes role in coordinating opposition to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

PHILADELPHIA, PA: President Obama’s “empathy” standard is widely rejected by most Americans according to recent polling. With Judge Sotomayor’s predisposition to “empathy” and judicial activism, President Obama and his nominee for the Supreme Court run against the mainstream.

The polling results are produced by IBD/TIPP, recognized for producing the most accurate Presidential Election polling in 2008.

According to IDB/TIPP, three in five (59%) believe a high court justice should consider only the Constitution, applicable laws and precedents rather than all of these plus his or her own life experiences and views. Only one in three (32%) say justices must consider their life experiences and personal views.

Thank goodness. Michael Kinsley hits the nail on the head this morning in the Washington Post about Sonia Sotomayor's membership in a discriminatory women's club:

If Obama had nominated a man who was a member of the Bohemian Grove, that would be a big issue and probably a fatal one. So how is it different if Sotomayor is a member of a club set up specifically to be the female equivalent? Rather than try to answer this question honestly, Sotomayor chose to make the preposterous argument that the Belizean Grove isn't a women's club. It's just that no men have ever applied for membership, you see. White clubs used to explain the absence of black members the same way. It's a laughable argument — a brazen whopper — and an insult to the citizenry and the Senate that must confirm her.

Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the United States Supreme Court has generated a healthy debate over the role of judges. Some fuel was recently added to the fire when it was discovered that the White House sent Republican U.S. Senators a memo making the case that Sotomayor is a "[a] nonideological and restrained judge." According to the White House, Sotomayor rejects liberal judicial activism and the injection of personal views and experiences from the bench because she "wrote expressly about the importance of judicial restraint" during the confirmation process for her Second Circuit nomination.

In addition to the problems Matt has summarized (calling Thurgood Marshall "Thurmond," etc.) in Judge Sonia Sotomayor's writings and speeches, yet another is that she likes to talk about how she rejects common-sense definitions (indeed, any definitions) of words such as "merit" and "wise."

In a speech Sotomayor gave shortly after she became a federal court judge, she called herself "the perfect affirmative action baby": She had not done as well on standardized tests as her fellow Princeton and Yale Law students, and she asserted that such tests are "culturally biased." She also said, "I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means."

A conservative coalition has formed in Colorado to oppose President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the New York judge is a judicial activist who puts her "personal political agenda" above the rule of law.

"Sonia Sotomayor's statement that a 'wise Latina woman' would generally make better decisions because of 'the richness of her experiences' than a white male reveals the extent to which political and personal agendas have supplanted the rule of law in selecting nominees," former State Treasurer Mark Hillman said in a press release announcing the coalition. "Rule of law requires that laws be written, accessible, understandable and uniformly applied."

Last week, soon after the White House delivered Judge Sotomayor's Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire in what it billed as record time, it became clear that Judge Sotomayor had failed to disclose an important memo she wrote for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) arguing against the death penalty in New York.

"It now appears that she failed to disclose more than just that memo: the questionnaire contains many glaring omissions that would have given the Senate and the American public a better idea of who she is and how she approaches the law," said JCN counsel Wendy E. Long. "These omissions lead to the inescapable conclusion that the White House wants to rush through her nomination without giving Senators and the American people full transparency about Sotomayor's record."

“It’s something that’s certainly unprecedented in the annals of White House activity on Supreme Court nominations,” Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network said in a conference call with reporters. She called the event a “sideshow” aimed at “misleading” the public about Sotomayor’s judicial record.

As Ed notes, press accounts of yesterday's White House Sotomayor Pep Rally with law-enforcement groups quote Vice President Joe Biden as saying "Judge Sotomayor has your back" and "throughout this nominating process [sic], I know you'll have her back." [I think Biden means the "confirmation" process; the "nomination" process was over when the President nominated Judge Sotomayor.]

TO: JCN MEMBERS AND INTERESTED PARTIES
FROM: WENDY E. LONG, COUNSEL
DATE: JUNE 9, 2009
RE: SOTOMAYOR: NO “LAW-AND-ORDER” JUDGE

Today's staged attempt by Vice President Biden and the Obama Administration to portray Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "law-and-order" judge is an unprecedented political campaign by a White House for a Supreme Court nominee.

In the past, outside groups have held such events independent of the White House and were not controlled by the White House. Today's event looks like a county sheriff election rally. The purpose of this sideshow is to avoid facts in Sotomayor's actual record that indicate a soft-on-crime judge who twists the law, particularly law at the intersection of race and crime issues, and who avoids binding precedent as a lower court judge in ways that unnecessarily favor criminals and hinder law enforcement.