Thread: Obama to name Sotomayor as Supreme Court pick

So what's the scoop on her? Time to get googling. The article all but states he bowed to the pressure.



Obama to name Sotomayor as Supreme Court pick

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama has chosen federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, two sources told CNN on Tuesday.

Obama plans to announce his nominee at 10:15 a.m. ET Tuesday, sources told CNN.

Obama said Saturday he wants intellectual firepower and a common touch in the next Supreme Court justice and said he doesn't "feel weighed down by having to choose ... based on demographics."

Obama's nominee will replace retiring Justice David Souter, who announced this month he would step down when the court's current session ends this summer.

There had been wide speculation that Obama would name a woman to the court, which has one female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Obama also had been under pressure to nominate a Hispanic justice to the court, which has never had one.

Obama's nomination will have to be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.

The nominee is not expected to have difficulty being confirmed in the Democratic-controlled Senate in time for the new court session in October.

The president has said he hopes to have hearings in July, with the confirmation completed before Congress leaves for the summer.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/26/ ... index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor

Link to her wiki information. They already have in there about her nomination today!

Left-leaning...



Judge Sonia Sotomayor a Frontrunner to Replace Souter on High Court
May 1, 2009



With Justice David H. Souter preparing to step down in June from the high court, many are speculating that the top candidate to replace him is Sonia Sotomayor, who, if selected, would be the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

Sotomayor, a 54-year-old woman of Puerto Rican descent who rose to prominence despite being raised poor in the Bronx, was appointed by President Clinton to the seat she currently holds on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Sotomayor has 16 years' experience in the courts and is a graduate of Yale Law School. Described as a centrist by some and a liberal by others, Sotomayor's high-profile decisions include the go-ahead for The Wall Street Journal to publish the suicide note of White House attorney Vince Foster. She also sided with labor in the Major League Baseball strike of 1995.

Sotomayor has been listed in Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the nation's 100 most influential Hispanics.

Today, as news of Souter's planned retirement spread, several media outlets named her as being not only among those on a short list of several possible successors, but the one most likely to be picked.

Sotomayor was the first of five names mentioned on the Huffington Post, which quoted a recent forum discussion from the Columbia Law School Magazine in which legal experts speculated that she would be the top candidate.

The women's magazine Web site wowOwow speculated that she was the top candidate, citing how, last month, New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand sent President Obama a letter urging him to appoint a Hispanic to the court should a vacancy open up.

They suggested either Sotomayor or Obama-appointment Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Sotomayor was also on the short list of the New York Times, which speculated that the likely successor will be a woman, since the only female currently on the court is 76-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

However, not all pundits agree she is the top pick. Among the skeptics is Politico commentator Ben Smith.

"There's some basically vacuous, but plausible, conventional wisdom saying that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a likely pick," he wrote. "I'd suspect, though, that Obama will be tempted to pick one of the prominent legal minds whom he knows personally, and whose philosophy he likes, given his own engagement with legal theory."

Although she's considered left-leaning, Sotomayor, like Souter, is an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, who nominated her for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. This made her the first Hispanic federal judge in New York state.

Souter, too, despite being nominated by a Republican, over the years proved to be a stalwart of the left.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/20 ... ner_to.htm

Why does President want empathy? for the illegal immigrants?

Is she an anchor baby? Is she a dual citizen?

Related Post:
AP source: Obama picks Sotomayor for Supreme Court
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-157237.html

The New Republic
The Case Against Sotomayor by Jeffrey Rosen
Indictments of Obama's front-runner to replace Souter.
Post Date Monday, May 04, 2009

A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sonia Sotomayor's biography is so compelling that many view her as the presumptive front-runner for Obama's first Supreme Court appointment. She grew up in the South Bronx, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents. Her father, a manual laborer who never attended high school, died a year after she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight. She was raised by her mother, a nurse, and went to Princeton and then Yale Law School. She worked as a New York assistant district attorney and commercial litigator before Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended her as a district court nominee to the first President Bush. She would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, if you don't count Benjamin Cardozo. (She went to Catholic schools and would also be the sixth Catholic justice on the current Supreme Court if she is, in fact, Catholic, which isn't clear from her official biography.) And she has powerful supporters: Last month, the two senators from New York wrote to President Obama in a burst of demographic enthusiasm, urging him to appoint Sotomayor or Ken Salazar.

Sotomayor's former clerks sing her praises as a demanding but thoughtful boss whose personal experiences have given her a commitment to legal fairness. "She is a rule-bound pragmatist--very geared toward determining what the right answer is and what the law dictates, but her general approach is, unsurprisingly, influenced by her unique background," says one former clerk. "She grew up in a situation of disadvantage, and was able, by virtue of the system operating in such a fair way, to accomplish what she did. I think she sees the law as an instrument that can accomplish the same thing for other people, a system that, if administered fairly, can give everyone the fair break they deserve, regardless of who they are."

Her former clerks report that because Sotomayor is divorced and has no children, her clerks become like her extended family--working late with her, visiting her apartment once a month for card games (where she remembers their favorite drinks), and taking a field trip together to the premier of a Harry Potter movie.

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But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, "Will you please stop talking and let them talk?") Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, who would later become her colleague, put this point more charitably in a 1995 interview with The New York Times: "She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media."

Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues.

Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details: In 2001, for example, a conservative colleague, Ralph Winter, included an unusual footnote in a case suggesting that an earlier opinion by Sotomayor might have inadvertently misstated the law in a way that misled litigants. The most controversial case in which Sotomayor participated is Ricci v. DeStefano, the explosive case involving affirmative action in the New Haven fire department, which is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court. A panel including Sotomayor ruled against the firefighters in a perfunctory unpublished opinion. This provoked Judge Cabranes, a fellow Clinton appointee, to object to the panel's opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever to the constitutional issues at the core of this case." (The extent of Sotomayor's involvement in the opinion itself is not publicly known.)

Not all the former clerks for other judges I talked to were skeptical about Sotomayor. "I know the word on the street is that she's not the brainiest of people, but I didn't have that experience," said one former clerk for another judge. "She's an incredibly impressive person, she's not shy or apologetic about who she is, and that's great." This supporter praised Sotomayor for not being a wilting violet. "She commands attention, she's clearly in charge, she speaks her mind, she's funny, she's voluble, and she has ownership over the role in a very positive way," she said. "She's a fine Second Circuit judge--maybe not the smartest ever, but how often are Supreme Court nominees the smartest ever?"

I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths. It's possible that the former clerks and former prosecutors I talked to have an incomplete picture of her abilities. But they're not motivated by sour grapes or by ideological disagreement--they'd like the most intellectually powerful and politically effective liberal justice possible. And they think that Sotomayor, although personally and professionally impressive, may not meet that demanding standard. Given the stakes, the president should obviously satisfy himself that he has a complete picture before taking a gamble.

Jeffrey Rosen is the legal affairs editor at The New Republic.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... e10199a085

Hispanic vote bought and paid for.

ourcountrynottheirs wrote

Hispanic vote bought and paid for.

It appears to be the case. Anchor babies, illegal aliens who vote fraudulently, their supporters, and liberals have a win.

Galatians 6:9

They are mentioning the "Ricky Firefighter case" (?) and other problematic judicial decisions by this nominee. Calls need to be made to reject this nominee. She "legislates from the bench" and she is an activist.

Panel discussions at Duke University being mentioned too.

Galatains 6:9

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

Why does President want empathy? for the illegal immigrants?

Is she an anchor baby? Is she a dual citizen?

Related Post:
AP source: Obama picks Sotomayor for Supreme Court
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-157237.html

She's of Puerto Rican descent. Puerto Ricans are citizens of the US and Puerto Rico is an "unincorporated territory" of the United States.