Sotomayor Guides Court’s Liberal Wing

NY Times ^ | 27 December 2010 | Adam Liptak

[Erik Latranyi]

At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court.

That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely the quality that separated legal technicians like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. from great justices.

Justice Sotomayor would have none of it.

“We apply law to facts,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. “We don’t apply feelings to facts.”

We are now three months into Justice Sotomayor’s second term on the court. That is awfully early in a justice’s career to draw any general conclusions. But some things are becoming tolerably clear.

Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues. And she has displayed a quality — call it what you will — that is alert to the humanity of the people whose cases make their way to the Supreme Court.

So far this term, the court has issued two signed decisions in argued cases. Both were unanimous, and both were insignificant.

But for anyone looking for insight into the justices, there was much more information to be gleaned from another genre of judicial writing. In the last three months, the court has turned down thousands of appeals, almost always without comment. On seven occasions, though, at least one justice had something to say about the court’s decision not to hear a case.

Such writings are completely discretionary, and they open a window onto the author’s passions. They are also a good way to keep track of the divisions on the court.

[Talisker]

Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues.

Argus: Yeah that was some fear, man.

Amazing sentence, isn't it? The writer had to clutch the bowels of demonic insanity to even glimpse a way such a lie could be expressed so twistedly.

They're nothing more than creatures - certainly not humans.

[Theodore R.]

There’s nothing to guide: the four liberals are pre-committed before hearing a case. And too often it is five liberals, not four, thanks to Ronald Reagan and GHWB.