I swear I didn't just make this thread to make this thread. But this struck me:



Is it wrong that all of his finalists were women? Doesn't that mean he didn't choose the best person for the job but the best female? Is that the example we should set? I would have thought his people would have been smart enough to at least throw a male in there just to stop these threads from being made.

Yeah. This is exactly what I was thinking. But then, I didn't expect Obama to choose the most qualified person, I expected him to choose the person that gave him the best political advantage. No more politics as usual my ass. Obama is probably the most political president in modern history.

I thought it was a brilliant move on His part. He appeased a majority of his core voters while throwing the race card in the republican's face, so they would have to rally against a popular member of the voting block they so desperately courted during the Bush regime.

Interesting... she was one of the Appellate Judges in this case:

http://www.theskyiscrape.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=83142

Her nominations is looking more and more like Obama's best political move evar.

Picking a latina woman seems like a genius political move but I think he fucked up by not throwing in a token man in his "final four", that was my point.

The only way this woman's background could be better would be if she was paralyzed from the waist down after saving a boy from drowning and/or owned a puppy hospital.

Wait, Napolitano was a finalist? Wow.

she's made a few decisions that are baffling to me. it's going to be interesting to see the supreme court reverse her new haven affirmative action ruling right before she comes on board.

Wait, isn't that exactly what I said? This had nothing to do with who is best suited to serve as a Supreme Court Justice and everything to do with gaining political advantage.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009 ... cotus.html

Judge Sotomayor's most high-profile case, Ricci v. DeStefano, concerns white firefighters in New Haven who were denied promotions after an examination yielded no black firefighters eligible for advancement. Joining an unsigned opinion of a three-judge panel of the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor upheld the rejection of a lawsuit by white firefighters, one of them Hispanic, claiming race discrimination and, as part of the full appeals court, she declined to rehear the case. The Supreme Court is currently considering the case, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is the likely swing vote. Among the questions in the case is whether the law should treat diversity in the work force differently from diversity in the classroom. Judge Sotomayor dissented in part in an earlier case, Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education, finding that race discrimination had occurred when a school demoted a black child from first grade to kindergarten.

It was pretty big news here in CT. Whether you agree or disagree with affirmative action (I don't), this case was ..... troubling. Definitely hurt the White Man.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30946676/

WASHINGTON - When an important reverse discrimination case came before federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor last year, she and two other judges issued an unusually brief decision that went against white firefighters.

The judges' conservative colleagues on the court strongly criticized their terse decision. Today the Supreme Court appears to have serious questions about the ruling as well.

Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's choice to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, is likely to face questions about her legal reasoning in the case at her Senate confirmation hearing, with Republicans anxious to paint a picture of a liberal judge.


The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case by the end of June.

At issue is the action of New Haven, Conn., city officials who threw out a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results.

Criticism from conservative colleagues
Following their decision supporting the city, Sotomayor and her two fellow judges faced criticism from their conservative colleagues on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York for declining to issue a detailed ruling.

The panel, including Sotomayor, had embraced a lower court decision throwing out the test while offering no in-depth analysis of their own.

The court "has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance," the other judges wrote.

The analysis of the case by Sotomayor and the other two judges — one of the most important cases remaining on the Supreme Court's calendar — runs to just six sentences.

Supreme Court evaluation
At Supreme Court arguments in April in the New Haven case, the justices seemed divided. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often holds the balance, seemed concerned that there should be a strong showing that the test for firefighter promotions was flawed before city officials set it aside.

The New Haven case wouldn't be the first time the justices are evaluating the work of a new or potential colleague.

In an important case in the war on terror, Chief Justice John Roberts didn't participate when the Supreme Court overturned the Bush administration's system of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay in 2006. As an appeals judge, Roberts had ruled in favor of the administration when the case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In the New Haven case, the Civil Service Board "found itself in the unfortunate position of having no good alternatives," the three-judge panel concluded.

"We are not unsympathetic" to the white firefighters' 'expression of frustration,'" the judges wrote in underscoring the difficult issues. One of the white firefighters, who is dyslexic, made intensive efforts that appear to have resulted in his scoring highly on one of the exams, only to have it invalidated.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=21626

Sotomayor was criticized by some student-speech advocates after a decision in May 2008, in which she joined two 2nd Circuit colleagues in deferring to Connecticut high school administrators who had punished a student for an off-campus blog entry about a canceled student event.

School officials prohibited the student from running for class office because of the entry, which referred to school officials in vulgar terms. The judges said school officials have “the difficult task of teaching ‘the shared values of a civilized social order’ — values that include our veneration of free expression and civility, the importance we place on the right of dissent and on proper respect for authority.”

George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote at the time that “the continual expansion of the authority of school officials over student speech teaches a foul lesson to these future citizens. I would prefer some obnoxious speech than teaching students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities — a key for college applications.”

Other critics said the decision supported an unwarranted extension of school authority to regulate student speech off-campus, or that it further weakened the landmark 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School Dist. that held students don't “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gates.”

What rulings of hers do we like?

Or, I suppose thats rather moot as the Supreme Court's been busy 'rolling back' legal protections. Representation? You don't need no representation present...

Activist?
or
Realist?

Guys, she's on record saying that if you don't share her same life experiences (i.e., if you're not a Latina woman), you're not as wise as her. What else do you need to know, that she ranks being a representative of a certain class ahead of being a judge?

What'd she say exactly?

“wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences ...would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

“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

Ouch....that's brutal. Since I just got back from vacation, however, more research is obviously necessary, however.

I just hope this pick doesn't empower my maid and my gardener and my future maid's and gardener's.

so now the puerto ricans are getting uppity?