Another Thread With Little Or No Significance
 

Let me make a prediction...

Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed by a landslide vote by the U.S. Senate.

Everyone knows that the 59 Democratic Senators will vote for her confirmation. All that is needed are a few GOP Senators to affirm her nomination and bring her nomination to the Senate floor for a quick up-or-down vote. Let's just look at three states--all of which have major concentrations of Latino residents and voters--Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Five of the six Senators from those three states are Republicans. So far, not a single one has said that they would not vote to support Sotomayor's nomination. Very liklely, none of them will vote against her. They'd be committing political suicide.

So the way I read the tea leaves, Sotomayor wins in a landslide and a quick landslide, at that.

So, are there any other major political questions to get us all frothing at the mouth theses days? Because Sotomayor's nomination certainly isn't an issue that holds much question as to the outcome.

I don't know about the political suicide angle. Too many democrats are saying that. How come? I think the democrats are trying to use the bigot or race card again. I also think the RINO's should pick a side of the fence they want to fall on.

There is no doubt she will be confirmed.

However, such an opportunity to have a discussion centered around this nomination on many many topics ! Immigration, race, etc.

Two Comments On Sotomayor's Record
 

Picked up from watching the Sunday news shows this morning...

-- David Brooks, appearing on Face The Nation, commented that Sotomayor adjudicated about 90-100 cases that were rooted in a question regarding the rights of immigrants or minorities. According to Brooks, she ruled against the minorities in almost all cases.

-- In the New Haven firefighter's case, as one of three appellate court judges, she upheld the ruling of the lower court. That's a far cry from trampling on the rights of non-minorities who were clearly mistreated in the promotion exam process. The lower court judge made his ruling documented with a 47-page brief. Apparently both the written as well as the case precedents gave neither the lower court judge or the appeals judges a clear standard for making a ruling. So apparently the appeals court simply upheld the ruling of the lower court. Many have opined that the decision was a clear signal to the appropriate legislative bodies that the applicable law needed to be re-written. It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court rules on this case in a few months. They will have no more written or case law than the lower courts, so any decision to overturn the decisions of the lower courts could truly be criticized as SCOTUS "making law" from the bench.
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I have the first-hand experience with how the courts work in anticipation of an appeal. The case I was involved with was a capital case, the murder of a relative. While the evidence proving the guilt of the accused was overwhelming, the case seemed to meander at a very slow pace thru the pre-trial hearings process--a total of almost four years from the date of the crime until the start of the trail.

When I complained to the assistant state attorneys who were prosecuting the case, they explained that the judge was being extremely careful in documenting each of his rulings during the hearing phase of the proceedings, documenting each of his decisions with written or case law, much of which was researched and provided to the judge by the prosecutors.

The prosecutors explained the appeals process in this way...They explained that if the judge actually made an error in the admission of evidence or the conduct of the trial, those could be grounds for a successful appeal. They noted, however, that if the decisions made by the judge in the process were in compliance with written and case law precedents, and even if the judge could have justifiably ruled either for or against the accused based on the law and precedents, they explained that the appeals court would never overturn a lower court decision based only on their belief that the lower court judge made an error in judgement. The prosecutors explained that an appeals court will NEVER overturn the judgement of a lower court judge, particularly when his decisions were documented with briefs indicating the written and case law he used in arriving at a decision. Appeals are only successful if errors in procedure or evidence or the application of incorrect law were made by the lower court--not his judgement in deciding based on those things.

I don't know whether criminal case appeals are any different than some of the cases heard by appeals judges or SCOTUS. Nor do I know whether the explanation provided to me applies anywhere outside the State of Illinois. But if the theory that an appeals court will never overturn a lower court decision based on the judgement of the judge, that may go a long way to explain what happened in the New Haven case, and provide some indication of what might happen when SCOTUS rules on thee case later this summer.

Alot of time usually goes into picking a judge that reflects the values of the sitting president. Obama is on record for being one of the most liberal voting senators. Push comes to shove...we all know how she is going to vote.

Keedy

Certainty
 

I'm not so sure of how certain we can be, Keedy. There have been examples in previous appointments where the SCOTUS justice seemed to decide much differently than people were lead to believe prior to the confirmation of the appointment. Justice David Souter is a good example. He was appointed by President Bush 41 with the expectation that he would be a conservative justice. It turned out that his decisions and opinions leaned to the liberal side far more often than anticipated.

There is judgment and there is discretion and there is application of the law. I agree that the first is left alone in principle, but the other two are "open season."

Cases get reversed all the time on "abuse of discretion," and attorneys routinely argue that in appellate briefs and oral argument. "Application of the law" is where the appeals courts question lower court rulings, claiming the lower court misapplied legal precedents.

When prosecutors "dotted all the i's and crosed all the t's," their concern was about evidence exclusion since evidence admission attack is routine in criminal (especially capital) cases where the decision standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" - a very high standard. Being able to eliminate any piece of evidence, especially when the elimination of one can lead to a chain of events which results in ghe elimination of a lot, is significant.

Civil/administrative cases rely on "clear and convincing" and the next lower "preponderance of the evidence" standards. Being able to eliminate a single piece of evidence can be highly dramatic.

So, when appellate judges hear appeals, they force respondents and petitioners to show why the lower court may have erred or was correct in rulings, depending on the basis of the appeal. They don't "re-hear" the case (unless the law allows de novo reviews, which is common in administrative cases, and the appeals court believes it is proper to do so).

In essence, appeals courts operate in the same manner as the "quality control reviews and inspections" done in almost every other industry. So, just because someone has a liberal or conservative or middle-road personal philosophy, how they do their jobs are not influenced to the degree people think by their personal philsophy.

Good point Kahuna....the political climate at the time of the Souter appointment was still In shell-shock because of the Bork episode. Of the 4 candidates that the Bush administration put on their list....Souter had the least "paper trail". Remember, even though nobody knew his opinions on issues like abortions, around 10 senators voted against him including Kerry and Kennedy of Massachusetts. The head of NOW, I think, protested that his appointment would set back women's rights.
So, in this political world of tit for tat...the left should not protest too much for the scrutiny displayed towards this most recent appointment.

Bottom line
 

After the things that I heard her say in recordings in the news yesterday, I can say honestly that she should not become a justice on SCOTUS. She is a racist and believes in racial discrimination.

Yoda

A member of the loyal opposition

Yes, she said she is a perfect example of affirmative action. I wonder how the person who didn't get in Princton, because she got their "slot" feels?

Her qualifications - academically and experientially - to do the job are fine. It seems that most of the complaint about her is that people don't "like" her.

One of the best management instructors I know used to describe organizations as having two types of people - the popular and the competent, and only very rarely do you find someone who is both. And she described that the most awkward point came when she asked students to honestlly categorize themselves as popular or competent.

As we examine the curent SCOTUS team, every one of them is indeed competent, yet each one ticks off some group of people big-time due to personal traits, heritage, attitude and opinions.

Judge Sotomayor rubs many people the wrong way, for a variety of reasons. However, she has shown herself as a highly competent jurist whose appellate rulings mirror the law. So, is the preference for an Associate Justice who is popular or would you rather one who is [I]competent[/I?

Competent sounds like one step up from mediocrity to me. A position on the Supreme Court should be exceptional. I personally think all of this is crap. There must be dozens of exceptional people out there that would put her to shame.

There are definitely degrees of competence.

:agree:

Steps
 

As a person who finished first in her class at Princeton, had an exceptional academic record and was on Law Review at Yale Law School, followed by a notable career as a big city prosecutor, private practice, and then several increasingly responsible appointments to the bench by Presidents of different political persuasion, I'd have to say that Judge Sotomayor is pretty high up the steps on the competence scale.

Are there others that are equally smart and experienced? Probably so. So what? Judge Sotomayor was the one nominated by the President--not any of the others. The Senate's job is to determine whether she meets the Constitutional requirements to sit on SCOTUS. So far, there have been criticisms of how her ethnicity and gender might effect her decision-making. But no one that I've read so far has demonstrated how her background has had any influence on her judicial decisions whatsoever.

The Constitutionally required process for the nomination and confirmation of a SCOTUS justice is well established. What the process is not is a candidate search to be conducted by the Senate. That's the responsibility of the President. The President did his job, so at this point the Senate's job is to consent to the nomination--nothing more.

As I've said before, all this racism conversation is little more than political posturing. Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed in a landslide vote--because she more than meets the required qualifications. Period.