Sixty percent of circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor's decisions have been reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal. See the article. This is the new Washington where a 60% reversal rate gets a judge nominated to the high court, where serving as a community organizer and voting "present" in the state senate qualifies a man to be president, where dodging income taxes is no impediment to being treasury secretary, where sending dead fish to your opponents qualifies a man to be White House chief of staff. (Need I go on?)I think we're living in a Kafka novel or maybe in a matrix gone bad. Hey, maybe it's a pilot for a new reality TV series. Well, whatever it is, keep your sense of humor. In many ways today's reality is so ridiculous you just have to laugh about it --- but say your rosary first.
"Sixty percent of circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor's decisions have been reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal" This statement is not accurate. Judge Sotomayor has written 380 decisions, and the Supreme Court has reversed only 3 of them. The Washington Times came up with the bogus 60% figure by considering only the 5 decisions of hers that have been formally considered by the Supreme Court. But, the Supreme Court typically reverses over 75% of the cases they take, so she's actually done better than most appellate judges.
ReplyDeleteAs to Sotomayor's quip, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" -
ReplyDeletesuch is a hope, given that white males launched Roe & have sustained it ever since, to which faithful Catholics can only but heartily hold.
Meanwhile, too much to hope for, & of course couldn't be worse than the Repubs, but wouldn't it be loverly if Obama's pick brought down Roe?
Antigon
From pro-life blogs:
The only potential Supreme Court justice who may provide hope for
pro-life advocates is Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has been the subject of considerable speculation because Obama is receiving pressure to appoint both a woman and Hispanic and she qualifies on both counts.
"Despite 17 years on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has never directly
decided whether a law regulating abortion was constitutional," AUL
explains.
Sotomayor participated in a decision concerning the Mexico City Policy, which President Obama recently overturned and which prohibits sending taxpayer dollars to groups that promote and perform abortions in other nations.
Writing for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor upheld the Mexico City Policy, but AUL says the significance of the decision "may be minimal because the issue was largely controlled by the Second Circuit’s earlier opinion in a similar challenge to the policy."
AUL notes that Judge Sotomayor also upheld the pro-life policy by
rejecting claims from a pro-abortion legal group that it violated the Equal Protection Clause.
"Rejecting this new argument, Justice Sotomayor wrote that because the challenge involved neither a suspect class nor a fundamental right," AUL notes. "She then acknowledged the ability of the government to adopt
anti-abortion policies, noting, 'there can be no question that the classification survives rational basis review. The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds.'"
At the same time, Judge Sotomayor wrote an opinion overturning, in part, a district court’s grant of summary judgment against a group of pro-life protestors.
Though not concerning abortion policy directly, the case is viewed as a stand against free speech for pro-life advocates.
Hope you're right, Antigon, but NOW is launching an all-out push to get her confirmed. NARAL is more nuanced calling for a fair hearing and questions on Roe v. Wade. Does NOW know something? I can't imagine that Obama didn't get a promise of support for abortion. It's clear that's a litmus test. At any rate, she does appear to be a judicial activist who is willing to see an injustice in order to defend affirmative action promotions.
ReplyDelete