Sotomayor seated

No surprise there. The Senate vote ended up 68-31.

Congrats to the first Puerto Rican, and Hispanic, on the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor, race and the right

I guess attacking on race is either all those on the right who oppose Sotomayor have, or its all they know because the actual judicial record has no bearing on the argument.

The meme has become quite strong, however, and is being hammered by multiple GOPers at multiple media outlets so I guess the Republican Party is going to live, die or fade further in obscurity and irrelevance on opposing Obama’s first Supreme Court pick purely on an argument based on race.

Here’s Andrew Sullivan on the topic, first quoting Tim Goldstein:

In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times.  Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred.  (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.)  She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims.

Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.

Absurd would be the word. I don’t doubt she’s a liberal on these issues – guess who won the election – but I see no smoking racial gun here. Even a toy one.

Sotomayor and business

To this point I’ve done no blogging on Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court. This is interesting and ought to allieve concerns for some on the right, she has a decent track record regarding business.

From the link:

Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, has compiled a balanced record on business issues that is hard to pin down, legal experts said.As with David Souter, the justice she would replace if approved by the Senate, Sotomayor’s stances as an appeals court judge are unpredictable and sometimes defy expectations of both supporters and critics, they said.

“She has not been consistently … on one side of the spectrum or the other,” said Evan Tager, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown, who has reviewed her decisions as a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Still, some conservative critics argue that her stances in high-profile affirmative action and securities litigation cases show she’ll bend the law to favor employees and consumers over business.

Other analysts note, though, that Sotomayor has supported limiting damages in lawsuits against companies and will dismiss discrimination claims if she finds they aren’t supported by the law.

Tager said some of the positions she’s taken in damage awards cases, in particular, should hearten the business community.