The debate over Judge Sonia Sotomayor continues to rage this week. What is remarkable is how much is being said and how little substance can be found in the coverage. One would think that the law of averages alone would guarantee that some substantive points would be hit, if only by accident. It is becoming increasingly clear that, once again, we will not have a substantive and civil review of the qualifications of a Supreme Court nominee. Neither conservatives nor liberals seem to want (or are willing to tolerate) objective discussion of Sotomayor’s qualifications or opinions. For what it is worth, I would like to discard some of the most often heard arguments in the vain hope that we might still achieve some level of reasonable discourse in this debate.
What follows is a good dissection of the nonsense from the right, and some less stirring examples of falsehoods from the left. I particularly don’t understand his assertion that the left is using her stay at Princeton as the reason she should be confirmed, and Turley seems confused. The reason Princeton is an issue is a defensive posture to deflect the nonsensical and offensive claims that she isn’t very smart. Considering Turley was one of the first out of the gate with those kinds of assertions about her intellect, I suppose there is a good reason he wouldn’t understand that.
Overall, a good read, though.
*** Update ***
This Greenwald piece on his personal experiences with Sotormayor is also a very informative read.
*** Update ***
I concur with many of you in the comments, this Ambinder post is exceptional and could help to explain some of the friction between the reality the rest of us see and that which is posited by well-meaning folks like Turley:
I think Obama believes that the legal world is manifestly out of touch with modern society — that the judgment about Sotomayor’s intelligence stems more from the unwillingness of academics to believe intelligence consists of something other than how an opinion reads. Obama seems to be sensitive to classism in the elite. Perhaps an outspoken Puerto Rican New Yorker seems foreign and makes an academic a little queasy, which translates, in public, to complaints about her intellectual heft. It would be interesting to see if Justice Sandra Day O’Connor faced similar concerns when Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1981, she of humble western roots and a lack of ivory polish, who nevertheless also graduated from a top law school.
On MSNBC yesterday, a law professor (liberal Jonathan Turley) said that he and his academic friends were disappointed with the pick because he believed she wasn’t brilliant enough (compared to him presumably) and that she was more like “Thurgood Marshall.”
I think this underlines the same idea: Sotomayor and Marshall are/were from different classes and had different life experiences from most academics, who even if they come from humble roots became very insular, cerebral and theoretical once they become academics.
Stotomayor didn’t take this academic track, and as a result, is seen as different.
grimc
Interesting read. Although I’d like to hear his reason for categorizing liberal claims as “attacks”.
John Cole
@grimc: One of the things I have learned the past couple of years is that libertarians, as a general rule, feel very uncomfortable refuting just Republican bullshit. They always have to balance it out with “equal” evidence of Democratic perfidy.
They have to maintain the airs that they are not a member of every flawed group, I guess.
randiego
Show me an “Independent” or a “Libertarian”, and I’ll show you a fallen Republican.
Someone who is too embarrassed to admit they are (or were) Republicans.
tofubo
i wanted alito filibustered for, amoung other reasons, that he was yet another g.h.w.bush appointed conservative catholic yale law school grad who would do the bidding of the corporate elite
it would be hypocritical of me to back sotomayors appointment, given her identical credentials
who she is, that she is a woman or latina, doesn’t come into play or override her record of what she’s done
MikeJ
That’s not unique to libertarians or independents. Dems reflexively attack Democrats too, just to prove that they’re above the fray,
MikeJ
Uhm, she’s divorced. She may be a nominal Catholic, but conservative?
Yale has an excellent law school. Really. Sit down and talk to a grad. I’ve known several, and the dumbest among them was brilliant.
Like the way she screwed the MLB owners? Which particular case are you referring to?
John Cole
@MikeJ: Sotomayor, from what I have seen, seems to be a pretty moderate centrist type (see the Greenwald link). If your assumption is that the status quo is designed to advance the interests of the monied elites (our corporate masters and the plutocracy) as many on the actual left believe(and not the bogeyman left fictionalized by the GOP or the centrist Democratic party), it is quite easy to understand how someone with that perspective would state Sotomayor will do nothing but do the bidding of the corporate elites.
See also Larison yesterday on the “radical status quo menace.” The angle with which you view the figurative elephant matters.
Indylib
@randiego:
Not true for all the Independents. I was a registered Independent from 1985 until 2003 and I only voted for a Republican for President once. I grew up in a house where both of my parents had been registered Independents for all of their adult lives. I have no idea who my father voted for, he wouldn’t say and didn’t think it was “anyone else’s damned business” who he voted for. But I know my mother, who was a union member, voted Democrat for national races most of the time, and mixed it up in local and state races.
This was not unusual where I grew up in Colorado. A lot of westerners liked the idea of not being in either party.
gwangung
There are no other types left for any Democrat to nominate…at least for another ten years. All that’s been added to the court system are moderate types. And I highly doubt an academic could be placed on the Court by ANY President.
JK
To combat charges that Sotomayor is a wild-eyed radical –
Sotomayor Never Released Any Of My Clients
By Ron Kuby
http://airamerica.com/doingtime/blog/2009/may/26/sotomayor-never-released-any-my-clients
Bill E Pilgrim
If the nominee were a man they’d attack him for something else, if it were a white person they’d skip the racial attacks and find something else.
While there are certainly some central things about this candidate that are perfect to make them terrified and give them talking points for attacks, believe me when I tell you that they would find something no matter who it was, unless it were an extreme right wing conservative.
And even then they’d attack. Because it’s all political, all partisan, all the time. Democrats have some of that too of course but with the Republican party right now it’s epidemic, they’re the political equivalent of sociopaths.
And just to be clear what that word means, since it often sounds milder than it really is, characteristics include:
Grandiose sense of self
Pathological lying
Lack of remorse, shame or guilt
Callousness/Lack of empathy
and so on.
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
What has she done? Don’t be cryptic, come on, out with it. What is your particular beef with her?
jl
Thanks. That is a good column by Turely.
In this immense storm of lies and BS, Turley and Dahlia Lithwick are the only two pundits who have, like, actually bothered to read her opinions, which is what should matter.
I am still waiting for some one to actually write a short summary analysis of her legal work and philosophy for non lawyers -and neither Turley nor Lithwick have seem to have done that yet. But they both say she is a solid centrist, and I trust their judgment -they have been among the best commenters on constitutional law (though I think Turley was wrong on Clinton impeachment)
I don’t consider myself left-liberal, but I think the ‘original intentions’ is so mistaken and incompetent and just plain stupid, that I wanted Obama to appoint someone who would stir things up and discredit the Scalia and company BS.
So, in a way, this story is nothing new. Obama goes with a very centrist choice designed not to make waves in any substantive way. There is very significant and inspiring symbolism in the person chosen, but nothing to indicate that he will provide a needed strong corrective to very dangerous drift to extremist reactionary nonsense in constitutional law (and I think Supreme Court needs some serious shaking up).
And in response, reactionary nutjobs and jackasses go apeshit, and use a substantively conventional nominee with a slightly unconventinal life story (in only in the high class legal world) as an excuse to smear, lie, defame, and try to drag the country into dangerously ignorant, bigoted, and hateful territory.
Comrade Jake
Ambinder had a post up awhile ago concerning the internal thinking on Sotomayor from Obama’s camp. Regarding Turley’s comments in particular, I found it interesting:
ChrisB
Speaking of Princeton, which is a pretty conservative place as colleges go, I’m surprised nobody has tried to dig up Sotomayor’s senior thesis to show how radical she must have been (and most assuredly must be now).
I wonder if that was part of Obama’s vetting process.
jl
Paul Krugman has an interesting comment on the Sotomayor nonsense from the reactionary public opinion engineering machine (aka ‘the Wurlitzer’)
“The thing that is really driving conservatives crazy, I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to. Their whole approach has been based on the belief that Americans vote as if they live in Mayberry, and fear and hate anyone who looks a bit different; now that the country just isn’t like that, they’ve gone mad.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/a-note-on-identity-politics
I think Krugman is right. Their various scare machines have been their last-resort equalizers when they have no facts, no logic, no argument. But they have run the ‘white fright’ machine so hard and abused it so much, the gears are stripped. And most people under 40 have no idea WTF they are talking about, when they play this song on race and ethnicity. They are frantically pulling the levers, and in a panic that nothing is happening. I guess it would be a laughable situation, except that what they are doing is wrong (that is, very immoral and unethical in the most basic way) and it is dangerous, in my opinion.
ChrisB
@ChrisB: Well, a moment’s research shows I wasn’t the first to consider Sotomayor’s thesis:
Apologies in advance for my rudimentary linking skills:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/us_world/Sotomayors-Troubling-Senior-Thesis.html
flounder
I am frankly amazed that the Princeton connections of Sam Alito aren’t a bigger story in all this.
I mean the guy was a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which was a group actively dedicated to keeping people like Sotomayor out of Princeton. If I was a Democrat with facetime on MSNBC I might mention that once or twice.
The contrast between a Republican pick and Democratic pick could not be more striking.
JK
@ChrisB:
h/t http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2009/05/sotomayors-socialist-yearbook.html
tofubo
MikeJ
#41 would not appoint a lefty to the seat his cousin previously sat in (yet another yalie, but not law school) and frankly, a previous speaker of the house, frankly, is now catholic, and is frankly, well schooled in divorce, only liberals get seperated ??
i never said they were stupid or not brilliant
voting against a monopoly does not an upton sinclair make and try buying a MLB team for less than a half a trillion, i’m trying to find the link, but when she votes with her other republican appointed panel members 95% of the time…
Indylib
@Comrade Jake:
I thought this was the most interesting part of Ambinder’s post
I would love to see some of the character traits that Obama seems to see in her media appearances and during her confirmation hearings.
It would be so novel to hear a SCOTUS nominee give some ideas about what they really believe than the nonsense “no comment” equivalent we got from Robertson and Alito.
jl
@flounder:
Just to keep this bipartisan, I think Woodrow Wilson played a big part in keeping Princeton racist and classist long after most institutions were moving on, when he ran the place (as president or chancelor, or provost whatever he was at Princeton).
JWW
John,
as !!! . You don’t you cover the “Spelling Bee”, it is of interest for those with an education. But then again, you lack any need for one.
Your grand group of followers would also see no use in following such. It’s not the spelling, it’s the knowledge.
grimc
@Comrade Jake:
It makes me wonder, with some surprise, why there’s been no real discussion about the fact that Obama was a constitutional law professor, and what role his philosophy on con law played in this nomination. Is it really too much of a stretch to bet that before the Senate and Oval Office, Professor Obama’s real dream was to be on the Supreme Court? Isn’t it entirely likely that while everybody’s focused on the particular candidate, Obama’s thinking on some completely different level?
flounder
@jl
Wilson was a racist. I think he started that Confederate wreath garbage we dealt with last week. He also ran Princeton in 1910 or so, when women couldn’t even vote. Alito was bragging about being a member of a sexist, racist group in 1989.
tofubo
oops, that ‘trillion’ should be ‘billion’, got mixed up w/gov’t level numbers
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
Gee, I hope that since you made a post to someone else ten minutes ago that you’re currently formulating an answer to my question to you, I mean, unless what you intended was a hit and run.
ETA: Ah, I guess not!
jl
OK, hang to your hats, here we go with actual substance on Sotomayor. I hope no one faints from the shock of looking at decisions she has actually written. Don’t bother telling the wingnuts, since I doubt they would understand the concept.
The Greenwald piece above as a link to a SCOTUS blog analysis of Sotomayor’s decisions in civil cases.
Judge Sotomayor’s Appellate Opinions in Civil Cases
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/
SrirachaHotSauce
@Little Dreamer:
She has darkish skin and sort of a broad nose and talks about her Latina cultural heritage.
And she apparently quoted Norman Thomas, in a blurb that translates to “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Radical. Clearly radical.
I mean, really. Try again? What kind of Si Se Puede communist crap is that?
Comrade Jake
@Indylib:
I agree, that was a blockbuster. Every once in awhile Ambinder posts a gem that pretty much nobody notices.
Given the number of people who’ve characterized Sotomayor as not that type of judge, you wonder if Obama’s playing another excellent round of poker here. Everyone thinks he’s just got a pair of queens and a bunch of junk, when he’s holding a royal flush.
Little Dreamer
@SrirachaHotSauce:
Touche’
KCinDC
Maybe he can follow in the footsteps of William Howard Taft and become chief justice after he’s president.
Armando
Nice post John. Good stuff on Turley.
Armando
Let me add that Turley is misrepresenting his performance on MSNBC the day of the announcement. It was not quite as benign as he now pretends.
Indylib
@Comrade Jake:
That would be because he usually posts Village-lite crap. I never would have read this if you hadn’t linked to it.
Morbo
Turley’s earlier post on the topic was dangerously close to the CW. It actually wasn’t too horrible, but there was this: “I do not agree with Scalia on many things, but he has been able to maintain a coherent philosophy.” Given what that philosophy actually is, I was taken aback given what I’ve seen out of Turley that he would say such a thing approvingly.
tofubo
LD, no “hit and run”, just didn’t see your note
i just wished that a yet another “g.h.w.bush appointed conservative catholic yale law school grad who would do the bidding of the corporate elite” would not be the type of person obama would have picked for the supreme court, that beef sandwich is too much to swallow
should she be confirmed, i’ll be glad to be proven wrong
JK
@Comrade Jake:
@Indylib:
This is the same Marc Ambinder who defended the tea parties and blasted Janet Napolitano for the DHS report on the threat posed by right wing extremists. Ambinder can go fuck himself.
SrirachaHotSauce
Parsing, I take away the ghwb reference (doesn’t matter), the “conservative” label (vague, unspecific), the “catholic yale (sic) law school grad” (whubba?), and I am left with ….
“Would do the bidding of the corporate elite.”
Ah, now we are getting somewhere. Support for that part, please?
Comrade Jake
@JK:
Well, hold on a minute. I agree that Ambinder posts more than his fair share of crap. Nevertheless, the post I linked to contains stuff you just won’t find anywhere else. The mediocrity of the rest of his stuff doesn’t invalidate the good posts. You might as well put your fingers in your ears and scream “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA!”
MikeJ
We shopuld be pissed at bush the smarter because he appointed someone from a school you don’t like? As I said, Yale is a great school.
Only liberal Catholics, yes. Almost by definition, conservative Catholics would rather make each other miserable. Plenty of conservatives get divorced but they usually become fundigelicals when then do.
SrirachaHotSauce
@KCinDC:
He’s going to have to put on about 300 pounds.
Betsy
This is a little OT, but…May I just point out that we academics don’t all think alike? It’s somewhat dishearting to me how often the words “academic” or “professor” etc., are thrown around as pejoratives. Having had a few glasses of wine, I’m not up to running down all the leads right now, but I do not believe for a second that all the academics who have commented on her have done so while looking down their noses. After all, one of those “academics” was the one who just appointed her to the Supreme Court. We don’t all come from wealthy backgrounds, we’re not all divorced from reality, and we don’t all believe the same things. Some of us aren’t even from the northeast or California!
Also, cute how he juxtaposes “humble roots” and “cerebral” as if they’re mutually exclusive.
ETA: I would also point out that most professors (i.e. the ones who aren’t at Ivies or other first tier schools) make a lot less money than many of the business people, lawyers, and judges whom Ambinder thinks are more real. Their kids go to public school like anyone else’s; they have loans and mortgages (that is, if they can afford to buy) and in-laws and sick family members and all the other problems everyone else has. And they aren’t any more “theoretical” about those problems than anyone else.
robertdsc
How do you explain preventative detention? How do you explain state secrets? How do you explain FISA?
John Cole
I’ll defend Ambinder, as I find him consistently interesting and I really like his video discussions with Sullivan.
Little Dreamer
@jl:
She sounds pretty reasonable to me, and her opinions, from that article, seem to be mediocre. She definitely does not have a reputation for being a lone dissenter, according to that info.
someguy
When Party A nominates somebody, Party B’s base can get a lot of emotional satisfaction from pissing their pants and screaming, Party B’s politicians get a lot of face time on TV making sonorous noises, and all the PACs and non-profits raise enormous shitloads of money predicting the end of the world. Their journalists get ratings, appearance fees, and increased magazine sales / web hits / ego gratification from stirring the pot. Meanwhile, Party A spends it’s time doing basically the same thing, but also making the perfectly reasonable and true argument that Party B has gone utterly batshit insane.
Then when Party B nominates somebody for the Court, everybody gets up and switches chairs.
I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, at least at the operational level. It’s pretty big bizness to promote, and oppose Supreme Court nominees. After the fourth or fifth nomination you watch, this pattern becomes pretty evident. It’s like bringing a girlfriend to Thanksgiving dinner knowing she’s going to cause a fight, and a couple of your relatives show up loaded for bear hoping you bring that girlfriend that will give them an excuse to have a big blowout. The whole kabuki routine gets a bit tiresome, especially when you realize the Court will mostly be in agreement in about 85-90% of its cases, and only really stir up the pond in the last 10% or so of them.
Betsy
(Please excuse my grumpiness; I’m getting ready to go to the memorial service of a wonderful, wonderful man who did so many incredible things in his life (the only person I’ve ever met with a PhD from Harvard and no high school degree), and who was also an academic. He was like a grandfather to me and I miss him, and it pisses me off to no end that he can be reduced to “insular and cerebral” just because he had those three letters after his name and taught college.)
Calouste
Sotomator has been a federal judge for 17 years. 17. If there are problems with her judgement as Johnathan “I haven’t studied at an Ivy League school nor am I a professor at an Ivy League school but someone who got top honors at two Ivy League schools is way not as brilliant as I am” Turdley suggests, there should be enough examples to find.
We’re waiting for those examples. And we will probably still be waiting come the end of the year.
Sotomayor is well qualified to be a Supreme Court judge (comparisons with Meyers are insulting and ridiculous in the extreme), and unless there is proof to the contrary from her legal history as the her suitability, everything that is being said against her is racism, sexism and fud.
Little Dreamer
@Little Dreamer:
I said mediocre, I meant moderate, she definitely isn’t on a mission to create chaos in the courtroom.
jl
@Morbo:
Well, that is the elitist prissy academic snob side of Turley coming out. Sure he (Scalia) has a coherent philosophy, but it is an incorrect and unworkable philosophy that will wreck the country.
I am not lawyer, but Madison and Jefferson and Hamilton wrote in very g-ddamned plain and simple English that their ‘original intentions’ could not be the only framework for interpreting the constitution in a way that would properly govern the laws of this country.
They had different approaches to solving the problem of having a constitution that provided a stable framework for governance, but I think their basic message was the same.
Hamilton wanted a flexible reading of the plain meaning of the words (there was no shadaw set of real meanings to be divined from speculations about their intentions behind the words). Jefferson suggested periodic rewrites and amendments to the constitution.
Even back then, people had a hard time with the concept. Madison wrote that people thought he had gone senile when he changed his mind on the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States.
So, I agree with John Cole that people like Turley tend to get caught up in their ivory tower. Scalia is fine and admirable because he has a finely tuned and elegantly coherent logical system. That it produces horsehit for actually running a country seems to be a secondary consideration.
burnspbesq
@ tofubo:
If you think there is no meaningful difference between Sotomayor and Alito, you are not paying attention.
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
Cite please? What cases are you referring to where she favors corporate elites to be favored?
jl
BTW, while I am not even a lawyer, but I even disagree with Turley that Scalia has a coherent philosophy. A little while ago I started taking Glenn Greenwald’s advice that if you are interested in Supreme Court decisions, you should actually read the decisions, even if you were not a legal expert, and see what they actually wrote.
So, I actually read some of decisions on a few of the big Supreme Court cases on executive power, and war on terrorism, torture, habeas corpus, etc.
I am no lawyer, but I decided, just from a common sense basis that Scalia is a fraud.
I expected Scalia’s opinions to be unintelligible and refined legal mumbo jumbo referring to all sorts of obscure case law and previous decisions, with elegant reasoning from first principles of the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.
In short, I expected to be awed by the Legal Science dropped on my ass, even if I disagreed with it.
Dude, some of his decisions seemed like junk to me. They just degenerated into incoherent fear and pants peeing by a grumpy old hysterical man. The ended up with Scalia basically screaming “if you don’t let the president do whatever he wants we’re all going to die, OMG we’re all going to die!!! OMG OMG OMG!”
That is my very honest and firm, but nonlawyer, opinion.
tofubo
to all, yes i am biased against yale, LD, i will try to find examples, and the supreme court is the reason i have never voted for a republican for president
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-sotomayor-abortion28-2009may28,0,830246.story
Tattoosydney
Wait…. what?
Being like the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, who handed down groundbreaking decisions with frequent strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, is a … a BAD thing?
ETA: Thurgood Marshall’s first wife was called Vivian “Busters” Burey. Hee. “Busters”
OriGuy
Leave it to Tom Tancredo to up the craziness quotient. He’s claiming the National Council of La Raza, a 40-year-old civil rights organization, is “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”
Shinobi
*twitch* law of averages *twitch* not actual law *twitch* stupid… people… who make way more money than I do *twitch*
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
Are you biased against Yale itself, or biased against legacy candidates who got in and ended up becoming powerful people because they had their family money backing them? There IS a difference, Sonia Sotomayor was NOT a legacy student.
If your reasoning against Yale does not have to do with their legacy accessibility, please cite what your reasoning is, as well.
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
Bullshit!
The reason she decided as she did was because a foreign entity was looking for federal funding to perform abortions. It had nothing to do with her opinion on abortion, and you know it.
This is disingenuous CRAP.
Would you expect to go to a foreign country and get a federally funded abortion knowing you were not a member of that nation?
tammanycall
@Calouste:
Oh thank God! I thought I was the only one watching him on tv when the nomination was announced. He made such an ass of himself that I’m still surprised womens and hispanic groups haven’t demanded his head on a stick. We expect this sort of douchebaggery from conservatives, but when a liberal white male academic doubts the intellect of an ivy-league educated appellate court judge, part of me wonders if his real problem is that he thinks her surname is too difficult to pronounce.
Perry Como
Nonsense. There is no such thing.
eemom
I think there is something of an apples and oranges comparison being made here. The right wing smears of Sotomayor “not being very smart” are just pure racist, affirmative action-bashing bullshit.
Turley’s point, whether you agree with it or not, and I’m not saying I do, is that she may be a brilliantly smart person and a fine judge — but her opinions to date don’t evidence the kind of stratospheric intellectual engagement with cutting edge legal issues that he personally would like to see in a S Ct Justice.
Big difference there.
Comrade Jake
@Betsy:
As another academic, allow me to agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of your post. However, I think you’re reading way too much into Ambinder’s post.
Little Dreamer
@eemom:
I’m pretty sure Turley was talking out of his ass and hadn’t really even read any of her opinions. He stuck his finger up after spitting on it and heard she was an affirmative action candidate who went to Princeton and Yale and came to the conclusion she must not be very bright.
someguy
@ TammanyCall
Duh. Republicans and Democrats in power and most of the villagers don’t think too much of the rest of us. We could go to Yale or Penn but probably still wouldn’t be admitted to the club. That takes a couple generations of pedigree, or at least some serious ass-kissing and petting of the right people. Most of us are mutts. We don’t count, even if we were top of our class at an Ivy. We’re not in the club. Roberts? In the club. Alito? Not. Breyer? In. Souter? Out. Bush? In. Kerry? In. Clinton? Out. Obama? Forced his way in. And so on. Liberal or conservative, they have more in common with each other than they do with us.
I do have to wonder, though, why the Administration couldn’t have found a brilliant female UVA or Michigan grad for the nomination.
tofubo
LD, the bias is a little by yale in and of itself, but the legacy example you provide works for me
yes, she was NOT legacy, but she CHOSE to go there, so that’s a negative in my admittedly prejudiced view (not who she is, what’s she’s done),, she could have gone into a public defender job, but she chose to be a DA,, she could have done legal work for non-profits, but she chose do “boutique commercial litigation” for a firm whose “clients were mostly international corporations doing business in the US”,, and she’s a fan of the yankees, i mean, come on
Calouste
@OriGuy:
Ah, Tom “All my grandparents were born in Italy” Tancredo shows of some more of his “I’m in, close the door behind me” attitude.
I wonder how twisted or sold out that man is not to realize that what he is advocating is exactly what his grandparents had to endure when they first arrived. At least Alito acknowledged as such.
gwangung
Yeah, pretty much. It’s all about the class and family connection. Buffet? In. Gates? Not quite in…but if his family was EASTERN money (instead of that questionable West Coast money) he’d be in (though he’s married to a Dukie, so their kids are in).
Rick Taylor
@randiego:
Not always. I was a libertarian decades ago, and there were clearly two wings to the libertarian party: the more right wing side, and the purist side. A good way to tell them apart was to look at their views on defense spending; the right wing side thought this was one of the view proper governmental functions, while the purist side was consistent. The right wing side got more press back then (and was represented by Reason magazine). It’s been years of course, so maybe it’s taken over the entire party since then.
tammanycall
@someguy:
Because they were trying to partially diffuse the opposition arguments on her intellect with “Ivy League Honors”. UVA and Michigan are amazing schools, but I’d bet even money that in addition to the b.s. we’re hearing now, we’d hear a chorus of, “that’s school’s not that hard to get into” as well.
Which is frustrating, because you’d think they’d realize restricting their choices to people from only 8-10 schools (Ivies, Stanford, am I leaving one out?) is an incredibly narrow-minded way to look at the country.
Will
Turley claims liberals have made this claim:
I have not seen or heard a single liberal argue this angle. Who says criticizing her OPINIONS is racist or sexist? Isn’t that the whole point of the liberal defense–that the conservative attacks are paying no mind to her actual opinions, just her gender, “intelligence”, and ethnicity? He has it completely backwards.
I think this is just Turley setting up a straw man on the left side so he can appear balanced. His entire behavior during this process has been rather baffling.
Little Dreamer
@tofubo:
So what you’re saying is that every person of democratic stripe who went to law school and chooses to be a lawyer should become a public defender and work in non-profits? Project much? How very perfectionist of you. Not all dems ARE you. How dare you base someone else’s career aspirations and deem them worthless based on what YOU would have done.
Give me valid concerns, company names of corporations she championed through her litigation practices. Cite examples, you aren’t showing me shit.
Will
@eemom:
I think the problem is that you are making Turley’s point better than Turley is. Why can’t he frame his questions about her as clearly as you have?
SrirachaHotSauce
@tofubo:
Grew up the Bronx. I mean, come on.
( rolls eyes )
I assume you were kidding.
mvr
@jl:
The comment thread was priceless too:
by Richard Sattler was pithy as it comes.
And the one above it about accepting America as it is, with all of the people in it, was wise in its own way.
All are at: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/a-note-on-identity-politics/
mvr
@flounder:
And by “keeping people like Sotomayor out of Princeton” Alito would have meant, both women and minorities.
The only undergrads who would have joined that group during the time Alito was there were some pretty mixed up individuals.
mvr
@Morbo:
Scalia’s coherent philosophy looks more like fanaticism from my point of view. Any justice who says that taking sides in a “kulturkamp” (I can’t spell in English let alone in German, so forgive the inevitable error) is a legitimate government purpose has just a little bit too much enthusiasm for my taste.
mvr
@jl:
Right thing to do to actually read some opinions, as you say. The kind of reasoning a good justice goes through is the sort of reasoning a reasonably intelligent person can follow. Scalia is someone who is very good with rhetoric, but not with reasoning, and (thank God! or whomever) not all that good at persuasion. There are lots of verbally quick people in the world; Scalia is one of them. That doesn’t make them smart in the sense that they can figure out stuff that matters. Scalia is what I would call “lawyer smart” he can come up with something that sounds on its face like an argument if you don’t think about it too much for whatever conclusion he wants to support. But just as most lawyers are paid to make arguments for a purpose, Scalia as a movement conservative knows the conclusion before he knows how he is going to get there.
Brachiator
@eemom:
Who gives a rat’s ass? Turley is a fool. He seems to think that the role of a Supreme Court Justice is to write learned dissertations that can be parsed by an intellectual cabal, who will coo over the marvelous language, and shiver with delight over the wonderful twists of reasoning embodied in an opinion.
OOOH, here comes some “cutting edge legal issues” out of Turley”s behind, worthy to be sniffed over by his fellow coprophages.
Obama understands that ultimately the Court’s decision are about real people, and sometimes with relatively mundane, but urgent and deeply personal issues.
A double WTF to this. I always find it interesting when Marshall is demoted to the second tier, where presumably all nonwhite Court appointees belong, since Turley appears to be engaging in that genteel liberal racism which can never quite recognize a nonwhite person as a peer.
So Sotomayor can be compared to Marshall, but not to Day O’Connor or Ginsburg.
Turley is a formidable, respected and widely cited law professor. On the other hand, Thurgood Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. How many other lawyers of any race or gender have an equal record? John Roberts, by comparison, won 25 of 39 cases, for those keeping score.
I can’t find anything to show that Turley ever argued a case before the Court. Even if Marshall never crafted an opinion that would make Turley wet his pants, Marshall’s tenure on the Court was backed up by the hard experience of winning cases, and often winning cases that was the difference between justice and oblivion for his clients.
You can’t get more cutting edge than that.
mannemalon
@someguy:
Napolitano was on the shortlist at least.
MelodyMaker
Remember that time when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thought he could memorize the oath for the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States?
And then the President had to call him over to the White House to do it again? And suggested they do it s-l-o-w-l-y?
That was awesome.
DougJ
Very interesting post from Ambinder. I think he is completely right.
jake
I am weighing in as a former law school academic. Judge Sotomayor seems to be compared, frequently, to Thurgood Marshall, and often by those on the putative “left,” and the comparison is never meant positively. I don’t know whether the comparison is at all apt, but I have something to say about Justice Marshall.
If the rest of the Court had the intellectual vision to get beyond empty rhetorical formulae that mean nothing and give no guidance the way Justice Marshall tried to do, the law would be better for it. He was always, to the last, a lawyer arguing his case, so he tried to speak to his colleagues in their own stilted style, but he did so with an eye to breaking the bonds of the narrow vision their style of analysis created. In my view, his opinion in the San Antonio School District case was a masterpiece of lawyering and judging–trying to use the Court’s own (absurd) analytical structures, since he had to try to convince others to go along with him, but at the same time trying to smack his brethren in the face with a healthy dose of reality.
Was Justice Marshall, as I read yesterday, “not a lasting intellectual influence” on the Court? Probably true. That, however, is not a criticism of the late justice, but of all the narrow-minded products of privilege who sat on the Court in his day and continue to sit on it today and who don’t have the courage or vision to see what he was saying.
So, to all those who will continue to make slighting references to the man who did more good legal work before he went on the Court than any of the other justices of his time and since combined, I just say– well, I would say some words I won’t write for public consumption.
By the way, for those who will foolishly assume otherwise, I am white.
someguy
They’re both top 10 schools.
State schools.
Not in the club.
Little Dreamer
@Little Dreamer:
To tofubo, I’m still waiting for you to answer my #73.
Screamin' Demon
@Calouste:
The title is “Justice.”
@MelodyMaker:
There is no “Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.” The Constitution confers the title of “Chief Justice of the United States.”
Boo Boo Kitty
Oh my, if only Sontomayor turns out to be the next Thurgood Marshall.
Marshall is one of the greatest justices ever to serve.
My greatest fear is not that she turns out to be another Marshall, but that she turns out to be another Breyer. Breyer has been a big disappointment to me, as I find him to be a conservative technocrat.
Please, please be another Marshall.
P.S. I am white too.