Tue 26 May, 2009 06:34 am
Sonia Sotomayor to be the nomination, I can live with that although she seems more moderate than I would prefer.
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Type: Discussion • Score: 23 • Views: 18,698 • Replies: 220
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H2O MAN
 
  -2  
Tue 26 May, 2009 08:14 am
Old news.

H2O MAN wrote:
Tue 26 May, 2009 08:30 am


Liberal and female: Sandra Sotomyer
0 Replies
 
Miller
 
  -2  
Tue 26 May, 2009 08:40 am
To what extent does being Hispanic, Catholic, New York-bred, and female determine the ability of a candidate to interpret the law?

Is the practice of law an art, as is the practice of medicine ?
rabel22
 
  3  
Tue 26 May, 2009 09:54 am
@Miller,
The same as being white, protestant, Chicago bred, and male. She at least has experience in the law as it effects a common person which most of the supreme court judges dont.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 10:29 am
Sotomayor gets mixed reaction from lawyers
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
5/26/09

WASHINGTON " Judge Sonia Sotomayor has an up-by-the-bootstraps background, an elite education and a mixed reputation among the lawyers who appear before her.

The 54-year-old New York City native, a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, is considered brilliant by some and combative by others. Her decisions over nearly 17 years as a federal judge define her as an unabashed liberal, more pronouncedly so than the Supreme Court justice she now hopes to replace.

"President Obama said he wanted a justice with 'towering intellect' and a 'common touch' and he found both in Judge Sotomayor," declared National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy.

Raised largely by her mother in a Bronx housing project after her father died when she was 9, Sotomayor went on to earn her undergraduate degree summa cum laude. Her life story is a compelling one of upward achievement, even as her legal rulings will subject her to strict scrutiny from conservatives.

Avid baseball fans may recall Sotomayor from 1995, when she blocked team owners from using replacement players and thereby helped end a 232-day strike.

The Supreme Court itself is now reviewing a controversial ruling by Sotomayor and her 2nd U.S. District Court of Appeals colleagues, which upheld the decision by New Haven, Conn., not to promote white firefighters because African-American candidates had not qualified. The high court's conservative majority previously overturned two appellate decisions authored by Sotomayor.

Sotomayor has already cleared Senate hurdles twice before, as a district court nominee in 1992 and as a nominee to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998. A former New York City prosecutor, she secured her first judicial nomination through a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.

But by the time President Bill Clinton promoted Sotomayor to the appeals court, she was drawing fire from the right. Her 67-29 confirmation vote in 1998 came only after a lengthy procedural delay imposed by Republicans who even then considered her a likely Supreme Court prospect.

"Judge Sotomayor was being held up on the Republican side of the aisle because of speculation that she might one day be considered...for nomination to the United States Supreme Court," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont on the Senate floor at the time. He is now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Since joining the New York-based 2nd Circuit, a study by Akin Gump attorneys found, Sotomayor has authored more than 150 opinions on issues ranging from free speech to race, sex and age discrimination.

Like every other federal judge, Sotomayor also has been regularly evaluated by the attorneys who appear before her. Compiled in the well-respected Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, Sotomayor's evaluations run a wide gamut. Many are positive.

"She is extremely hard working and always prepared," one attorney wrote. Another called her "a very good writer," while a third said she is "frighteningly smart (and) intellectually tough."

But Sotomayor also has her share of detractors.

"She is temperamental and excitable; she seems angry," one attorney complained. Another called her "overly aggressive, not very judicial," and a third said she is "nasty to lawyers."

Lauren Goldman, an appellate practice partner with the firm Mayer Brown, said she was impressed with Sotomayor when she argued a business case before the 2nd Circuit.

"She was very prepared, and she has researched the case," Goldman said in an interview Tuesday. "She is a very active questionnaire, and she wants to get to the bottom of things."

Sotomayor's work as a prosecutor from 1979 to 1984 typically involved what she called in one Senate questionnaire "street crimes" as well as "child pornography, police misconduct and fraud."

While in private practice with the firm Pavia & Harcourt from 1984 to 1992, she represented foreign as well as domestic clients. For Italian car company, Ferrari, she challenged a former Sacramento-area car dealer. For to another Italian firm, the fashion maker known as Fendi, she pursued anti-counterfeiting cases against companies with names like Dapper Dan's Boutique.

Like many, if not most other appellate judges, Sotomayor has been second-guessed by the Supreme Court. In 2000, for instance, Sotomayor sided with former federal inmate John E. Malesko. Malesko was in his late 50s and serving a sentence for securities fraud when he suffered a heart attack after being ordered to quickly climb five flights of stairs back to his cell. Sotomayor agreed Malesko should be permitted to sue the private corporation that ran the facility.

"An employer facing exposure to such liability would be motivated to prevent unlawful acts by its employees," Sotomayor reasoned.

By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court disagreed, with then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist declaring that Sotomayor's reasoning would lead to a "marked extension" of the ability to file lawsuits against government contractors.

Judging from oral arguments earlier this year, the Supreme Court now appears poised to reverse another Sotomayor case. Sotomayor was among the 2nd Circuit Court judges siding with New Haven in its decision not to promote Frank Ricci and 17 other white firefighters despite their high test scores.

The Ricci case will loom large in the coming confirmation battle in part because of the internal court strife that has accompanied it. Another Clinton appointee to the 2nd Circuit, Jose Cabranes, harshly criticized as sloppy, speedy and unclear the manner in which Sotomayor and other judges quickly dismissed the firefighters' arguments

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes wrote.

Sotomayor has been single since a brief marriage, which ended in an October 1983 divorce. She is a diabetic, though otherwise she has described her health on confirmation questionnaires as "good."
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Woiyo9
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 11:04 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
She seems to have a excellent resume.

Amazing accomplishments for a Latino woman who is Type 1 diabetic.

She appears to be a competent pick. I can't wait to see what you all come up with, on both sides.
0 Replies
 
Merry Andrew
 
  3  
Tue 26 May, 2009 12:47 pm
@H2O MAN,
Quote:
A racist liberal president names a racist liberal female as his choice to be the next supreme... no big surprise.



A racist, sexist conservative poster makes a jackass comment. No big surprise.
Butrflynet
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 01:48 pm
A blast from the past:

September 25, 1992
A Breakthrough Judge: What She Always Wanted
By JAN HOFFMAN
The views from Pavia & Harcourt's 12th-floor offices in midtown Manhattan are commanding, and the carpeted halls, in soft pastels, are adorned by modern Italian paintings. But Sonia Sotomayor, a partner at the commercial litigation firm, was boxing up her things the other day to take another job. The new one comes with a pay cut, scant carpeting, dingy lighting and a room without a view.

Ms. Sotomayor is thrilled.

"I've gotten letters from people who remember me in grammar school saying that this is what I wanted," she said.

What Ms. Sotomayor has wanted was to be a judge. Next Friday she is to take the oath for a seat on the Federal court of the Southern District of New York, the first Hispanic American to do so. She will also become one of seven women among the district's 58 judges.

But what attaches to her name in legal circles is less her breakthrough status than incredulity: Many of her colleagues say that in a time of skepticism about the quality of judicial appointments, Ms. Sotomayor seems too good to be true. A Child of From the Projects

On paper, she comes across as a classic overachiever -- a child from the Bronx housing projects who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, became an editor of the Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School, spent five years as a prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney, then developed her substantial civil practice as a commercial litigator.

But it was her pro bono activities that an admiring Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts praised during her wrinkle-free confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June.

For 12 years she was a top policy maker on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. She was also on the board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, where she helped provide mortgage insurance coverage to low-income housing and AIDS hospices. In her leisure time she became a founding member of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, which distributes public money for city campaigns.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who recommended Ms. Sotomayor for the bench, gleefully recalled that when his judicial selection staff first suggested her name last year, they told him, "Have we got a judge for you!" Not Every Inch Judicial

In person, with her round face and faint spray of summer freckles, Ms. Sotomayor looks younger than her 38 years and, wearing dangling earrings and a leather-and-gold bracelet, not every inch the judge. Neither does she have the studied charm nor dazzle factor of many judicial candidates who win accolades from lawyers and politicians.

Hers is a cumulative impression. She is plain-spoken and direct, good-humored but not exactly humorous. She is also seemingly without affectation, a trait that colleagues say helps her move as comfortably among her wealthy European clients as she does in her old Bronx neighborhood, where she recently returned to live. (The Federal Bureau of Investigation advised her not to disclose it.)

"You know anybody who wants to buy my cheap apartment in Carroll Gardens?" she asks in a street-scraped New York accent, referring to the section of Brooklyn.

She moved because Carroll Gardens is not in her judicial district. The courthouse is in Manhattan, but even on a judicial salary of $129,000 -- modest compared with the potential earnings of a law partner -- Ms. Sotomayor has chosen moderation, and a longer commute from the Bronx, which is also in her district.

"I've never wanted to get adjusted to my income because I knew I wanted to go back to public service," she said. "And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it's not modest at all." She paused, as if watching a slide show of memories, and laughed heartily. "I have no right to complain," she said.

Her mother, a nurse who recently retired from her job at a methodone clinic, raised Ms. Sotomayor and her younger brother, now a doctor, largely on her own. "I saw her working, being the emotional and spiritual leader in our family," Ms. Sotomayor said. "She had almost a fanatical emphasis on education. We got encyclopedias, and she struggled to make those payments. She kept saying, 'I don't care what you do, but be the best at it.' "

Her father, a tool-and-die worker with a third-grade education, died when Ms. Sotomayor was 9. Both parents were from Puerto Rico, and because her father spoke only Spanish, Ms. Sotomayor did not become fluent in English until after his death.

She had intended to become the Puerto Rican Nancy Drew, girl detective. That dream ended at the age of 7, when doctors told her she had diabetes and suggested she pick a more sedate career. She got a new idea from an episode of "Perry Mason" when a prosecutor character on the old television program said he did not mind losing when a defendant turned out to be innocent because his job was about justice.

"I thought, what a wonderful occupation to have," Ms. Sotomayor said. "And I made the quantum leap: If that was the prosecutor's job, then the guy who made the decision to dismiss the case was the judge. That was what I was going to be."

Even as she speaks of the courts as often the "last refuge for the oppressed," Ms. Sotomayor, who has 400 cases awaiting her, defines a good judge as one who "has the ability to absorb a new area of law quickly, and has a commitment to take control of a case and move it forward."

When colleagues speak of her they emphasize her pragmatism. "I'm a down-to-earth litigator, and that's what I expect I'll be like as a judge," she said. "I'm not going to be able to spend much time on lofty ideals. I don't lose sight of the fact that they're important, but I also don't lose sight that 95 percent of the cases before most judges are fairly mundane. The cases that shake the world don't come along every day. But the world of the litigants is shaken by the existence of their case, and I don't lose sight of that, either."

Indeed, while she speaks of the pressure to crash-learn the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the excitement of being fitted for black robes, she keeps returning to "the anxiety and the terror" that joining the Federal bench provokes when she thinks of the sentences and fines she will have to issue.

"I don't get paralyzed by making decisions, but I fear the extent to which I'll be tortured by the difficult decisions I'll have to make," she said.

John W. Fried, her bureau chief when she was a prosecutor, attests to Ms. Sotomayor's decision-making capacity, noting how she would scrupulously search for her own reasonable doubt before going forward with a case. Mr. Fried, now in private practice, said she "was the brightest, most eager assistant I ever worked with."

Then he laughed, recalling that when he met Ms. Sotomayor she asked where the courtroom was.

Although Ms. Sotomayor left the Manhattan District Attorney's office eight years ago, she remembers in detail the victims and the lasting effect that crime had on them. "The saddest crimes for me were the ones that my own people committed against each other," she said. She has received letters from Hispanic people from all walks of life expressing their pride in her confirmation. "I hope there's some greater comfort about the system to Hispanics because I'm there," she said. Careful Responses

While Senator Moynihan is a Democrat, Ms. Sotomayor says she is politically independent, and her chatty expansiveness shuts down when she is asked about judicial philosophy. She allows that she is in the center. Then comes a tap dance around any questions on specific topics, her mouth twitching in amusement, her eyes bright, as if to say, "You're trying to cross-examine a cross examiner?"

How did she react to a recent appeals court ruling that disqualified Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin from hearing a suit against tobacco companies because an opinion of his about the case appeared biased?

"I'm aware it will have an effect," she said. "Some judges will feel they don't have a right to be too passionate."

When Justice Clarence Thomas was introduced at a Second Judicial Circuit conference, was she among those who sat on her hands rather than give him a standing ovation?

"I'll take the Fifth," she said.

What does she think of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which many judges resent for limiting discretion?

"I am very aware of the controversy surrounding the guidelines" and expect to "experience some dislocation with them."

So what kind of music do you like?

"Soft rock," the centrist replied.

Judge Jose Cabranes of Federal District Court in New Haven, a longtime mentor who will be administering her oath, cautions that she will quickly find herself leading "a much more isolated life than before."

Ms. Sotomayor, who is divorced, said that becoming a judge is like joining a monastery. So she plans to spend this weekend before her swearing-in with friends in New Orleans, the last such fling for a while.

Rocking out, your honor-to-be?

"Yeah," she said, with a smile and a shrug, "I party."

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/25/news/a-breakthrough-judge-what-she-always-wanted.html?sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print
0 Replies
 
au1929
 
  2  
Tue 26 May, 2009 02:11 pm
The question is will she uphold the law as written or be an activist judge and try to remake it.
Cycloptichorn
 
  0  
Tue 26 May, 2009 02:18 pm
@au1929,
au1929 wrote:

The question is will she uphold the law as written or be an activist judge and try to remake it.


You've turned into quite the Conservative, haven't you?

Cycloptichorn
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Merry Andrew
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 03:54 pm
@H2O MAN,
Quote:
Is that your very best defense?


Huh? What do I need to defend myself from?

And you edited my post. I called you a racist and a sexist. What's your defense for that allegation?
au1929
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 04:25 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Contrary to what flaming liberals as you may believe that is the function of the judicary. It is not to make laws. Unless I am mistaken that remains the mandate of congress.
H2O MAN
 
  -4  
Tue 26 May, 2009 04:27 pm
@Merry Andrew,


You have me confused with Obama.

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs012.snc1/2912_77964574775_758674775_1594156_3433336_n.jpg

Merry Merry Quite Contrary... Shave that pussy it's so damn hairy.
DontTreadOnMe
 
  4  
Tue 26 May, 2009 05:20 pm
@H2O MAN,
is it impossible for you to get through a post without all of the weanie & hoohoo references?

seriously, dude. it's like having somebody's 12 year old brother hopping around while we're trying to talk.
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Tue 26 May, 2009 05:23 pm
@au1929,
au1929 wrote:

Contrary to what flaming liberals as you may believe that is the function of the judicary. It is not to make laws. Unless I am mistaken that remains the mandate of congress.


You used to be, or at least represent yourself, as a lot more 'flaming liberal' than you currently do. Didn't take Obama's election too well, did you?

Cycloptichorn
H2O MAN
 
  -2  
Tue 26 May, 2009 05:26 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:

Didn't take Obama's election too well, did you?



The entire country isn't taking Obama's election too well.
DontTreadOnMe
 
  0  
Tue 26 May, 2009 05:28 pm
@H2O MAN,
H2O MAN wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Didn't take Obama's election too well, did you?



The entire country isn't taking Obama's election too well.


must be why his numbers keep going up.
H2O MAN
 
  -3  
Tue 26 May, 2009 05:34 pm
@DontTreadOnMe,
Drunk
 

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