Insufficient information. What is the actual rate of decisions going to SCOTUS from the type of positions she has held, and how does she compare?

I don’t find it unusual that a high rate of cases accepted by SCOTUS for review are reversed. They’re only going to accept cases where there is already a strong showing that the decision is potentially flawed. The question is, how many decisions has she made that had that strong a showing of being flawed, and how does that compare to other judges?

And then there’s the issue of how you really want to score a ruling upheld with unanimous faulting of the actual reasoning. Surely not as reflecting especially favorably on the judge’s erudition, for starters.

And then there is the issue of why a given judge would have many rulings reach SCOTUS at all. I don’t know what’s common, but 7 seems like a lot of ruling to get questioned all the way to the top.

Where are you getting your figures, Jon? Because they don’t match the records I’ve seen. She’s actually at 5 reversals for 6 cases taken up by SCOTUS so far, which is an 83% reversal rate, and in the one case that wasn’t reversed the court unanimously repudiated (even ridiculed) her reasoning but upheld the decision on other grounds, so it would not be unreasonable to say her reversal rate just missed being 100%.

She has one case still pending for review that I have not counted.

The average reversal rate for cases that actually to the Court is 75%, so she’s actually better than average. She’s 2/5 on cases that made it to the Court, and the Court chose to review only five out of over 150 total cases.

IF SCOTUS rules on it before she is seated, then she’d have to speak to it, right? Maybe the court will do her a solid and make a decision after hee confirmation but before her seating? No idea on the mechanics.

Settled cases, especially her rulings that were overturned by SCOTUS, are fair game. They are neither hypothetical nor pending.

Agreed on the minority side’s attempts to bait the nominee with hypotheticals: “Here, I’ve built this nice cross for you, won’t you please step up and nail yourself to it?”

Interested to hear what Sotomayor says when asked WHY she ruled for the city against the firefighters in the promotion test case. I hope she is asked, and answers honestly. I have heard she bought the rationale that the city was worried about lawsuits. I hope not. If nobody ever did anything they might get sued for, then nobody would do anything. I heard there was no published reasoning, just a shory decision.

Funny, though that if lawsuit avoidance was the reason, then lawsuit avoidance landed them in SCOTUS. Pretty rich irony, that.

But she appears to be an intellectual lightweight for a top-level jurist, just based on her reversal record. In the only (decided) case that went to SCOTUS that wasn’t reversed, the Court unanimously repudiated her reasoning and affirmed the decision on other grounds. Her remarks on “empathy” and policy-setting are also somewhat troubling, but are relevant only as reflected in specific rulings. Opinions outside the courtroom should not be counted against her unless they are reflected by her decisions as issued from the bench.

The GOP Senators will of course try to get her to answer hypotheticals as to how she would rule in certain situations, just as Dem Senators do with GOP SCOTUS nominees, and she will decline to play that game. And she will be 100% correct to do so–judges should rule on the specific issues in front of them, applying the relevant law, not build files of pre-decided cookie-cutter decisions to toss out by rote. OTOH, her decisions of record on settled cases are fair game for questioning and criticism.

We’ll see. In any case her appointment will not substantively change the balance on the court, nor does anyone really expect it to. I suspect she’ll be more of a “Me too!” vote for the liberal faction of the court than anything else.

When the court is packed with people on the other side I think there is room for not looking at losing as any indicator. They have to be taken on a case by case basis. My guess is that the people on the court would have been on the losing side at various other times in the nation’s history.

Sandra Day O’Connor had barely any judicial experience when she was picked if memory serves me correctly and Clarence doesn’t seem to be a heavyweight (One might view them as affirmative action picks since neither were seen as the brightest legal minds in the country at the time) but I do agree that it would be nice if the Court were the nine brightest and most reasoned minds in the country.

That said 6 out of 9 would be Catholics? Really? There is no one else with any other perspective that might be beneficial to the Court? Perhaps a someone who believed in evidence for their views?… That seems a bit unbalanced.

I still want to take my own measure of Sotamayor. I’m not running for office or looking for friends, so I am fine with stating that at this preliminary point, there are some reasons to doubt her intellectual heft. Speaking comparatively, of course. We’re talking about a council of eggheads, after all. So, how good will her reasoning be? Will she weigh and measure things the way a SCOTUS justice ought? When she disagrees with conservatives, will she be able to make a really good and persuasive legal counter-argument? She may bring other good things to the table of 9, but how will she fare when the doors are closed? Worth asking.

That she has a losing record on cases that went to SCOTUS is not the most promising of signs, and I don’t think that can be spun away. Still, I think the points about empathy and experience are useful and true. The judicial ideal is as Ginsburg (or was it O’Connor?) stated, that a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion as a wise old man. Most would like to believe that. And legally scotus is expected to strive for it. but it’s not and can’t be strictly true no matter how much we want it.

And judges DO make policy on occasion, by default. SCOTUS has been thrust into the breach or thrown into the lurch on more than one occasion, and will be so dumped again and again. Lawmakers never anticipate every eventuality. And it is not always a black and white point as to whether existing law is on point or not.

In such instances, we obviously need legal minds of great accuity. And we also need compassion and empathy and a wealth of experiences to draw upon as well. And a humble understanding of the momentus positions into which SCOTUS is so often cast. I have had my fill of ideologues who will preserve their narrowly perceived abstract principles at any cost. Simply put, when you are a SCOTUS justice, there’s a LOT to weigh. And the people deserve to have it all weighed.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that for all the squabbling about SCOTUS, when you look at its history, it’s a truly tremendous example of all that is worthwhile about American ideals. It has been a parade of outstanding individuals from various legal perspectives who have made a continual good-faith effort to see that America and Americans get what is just and right and good.

Under God has NO business in the Pledge. ZERO.

And it’s funny how you describe quoting Obama as “attacks,” Justin. Nice spin. His lefty code-speak made clear that he’s looking for someone with a very flexible, broad interpretation of the law.

I agree. It does however strike at credibility when the nominee is attacked before they are named and when anyone in the country knows what will be said (liberal, activist and extremist will be in the mix). Have the democrats had a nominee in the last fifty years for President who was not “the most liberal member of Congress”? Seems like that would be hard to pull off consistently. There will likely be some valid criticisms here but you won’t here that coming out of the GOP leadership. Their appeal will be to the dumbest among us.

I think the GOP would have better success resuscitating the corpse if they got rid of everyone they have and started presenting info to people like they were adults rather than sheeple. They also would do well to abandon the people who their current arguments work on. Some of the ideas of the GOP deserve a hearing but they are lost in the mix.

I suspect this charge may be partly true, if only in the sense that she won’t be an adequate liberal counterweight to the Conservatives on the court. I also suspect that the Republicans won’t touch it…quietly thanking Obama for giving them a justice who’s arguments won’t prevail over Scalia’s.

How ironic would it be if the Dems were so focused on Sotomayor’s diversity that they basically threw away a SC nomination?

No one said that empathy was more important than the rule of law–all anyone has said is that the person should have empathy as well as an understanding of the rule of law.

Sorry, correction.

Personally, I can’t wait until we run out of historical nominations. This is getting brutal. I hope the next one is a midget.

Propaganda (talking points) is indeed purposely one-sided. But that does not at all necessarily make any of the points factually wrong. What they are is one-sided. The way to fight that is with the appropriate counter-arguments and the other side of the story.

As to the nomination itself, the odds that Obama would ever appoint a non-liberal judge to replace a departing liberal judge were zero in the first place. One does hope that the nominations he make will have some intellectual heft and respect for the law itself, rather than running roughshod over it to reach their own preferred outcomes as has sometimes happened in the past.