Judge Sonia Sotomayor too Liberal for the Supreme Court.

"Where Policy Is Made": Sotomayor's Court Comment Explained

The ubiquitous conservative attack on Judge Sonia Sotomayor stems from a statement she made at a conference at Duke University Law School in 2005, in which she described the role appellate justices have in forming policy

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they are looking for people with court of appeals experience because the court of appeals is where policy is made," she said, laughing a bit through the next part: "And I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law. I know. Okay, I know. I'm not promoting it. I'm not advocating it. I know."

The remarks, four years later, have hit the central nerve of the conservative psyche. Figures within and outside the GOP have already announced -- even before Sotomayor was tapped to be Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court -- that they would be painting her as an activist from the bench.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Soon after the inauguration of Bush as president in January 2001, many liberal academics became worried that he would begin packing the federal judiciary with conservative jurists. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote an article in the February 2001 edition of the liberal magazine The American Prospect that encouraged the use of the filibuster to stop Bush from placing any nominee on the Supreme Court during his first term. In addition, law professors Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago) and Laurence Tribe (Harvard), along with Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center,
counseled Senate Democrats in April 2001 "to scrutinize judicial nominees more closely than ever." Specifically, they said, "there was no obligation to confirm someone just because they are scholarly or
erudite."

With no other way to block confirmation, the Senate Democrats started to filibuster judicial nominees. On February 12 2003, Miguel Estrada, a nominee for the D.C. Circuit, became the first court of appeals nominee ever to be filibustered.^[12] Later, nine other conservative court of appeals nominees were also filibustered. These nine were Priscilla Owen, Charles W. Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, David W. McKeague, Henry Saad, Richard Allen Griffin, William H. Pryor, William Gerry Myers III and Janice Rogers Brown. Three of the nominees (Estrada, Pickering and Kuhl) withdrew their nominations before the end of the 108th Congress.

On July 12, 2005, Bush met at the White House with the party leaders and ranking Judiciary Committee members from the two major parties — Republicans Bill Frist and Arlen Specter, and Democrats Reid and Patrick Leahy — to discuss the nomination process. During the meeting, the Democrats offered the President the names of three "moderate" Hispanic federal judges that they could accept: Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit, Edward Prado of the Fifth Circuit, and Ricardo Hinojosa, a district court judge from Texas. Reid later told the press he was disappointed that the President had not chosen to discuss his own choice of possible candidates with the Democrats. In the conservative magazine National Review, the three candidates suggested by the Democrats were quickly dismissed as being offered in bad faith because they were too liberal for a conservative president to seriously consider.

So the Democrats can filibuster ten conservative judges, just because they where too conservative? That is because the Democrats believe that judges can make law. Example Roe vs Wade. Law made by the Supreme Court. On the grounds that President Bush thought that Judge Sonia Sotomayor was too Liberal. And we the Conservative Right thinks she is too Liberal. The Republicans should Filibuster her nomination.

More Post from Wag This Dog.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor Racist or Just Wrong more than 60% of the time.
No job growth until after President Obama's four years.
A Thousand People Protest Obama Stimulus Plan in 35 degree St. Louis Weather.



Technorati Tags: Judge Sotomayor, Supreme Court

Enjoyed this post? Email a friend, Leave a comment, Subscribe to Wag This Dog, Link to any post.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor--courts make policy long clip