Word: sotomayor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sotomayor is right that much of her record demonstrates her opposition to judicial policymaking. In some of her opinions as an appellate judge, she sounds like Justice Antonin Scalia in her insistence that judges should avoid policy considerations at all costs. "The duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms," Sotomayor wrote in a 2006 dissent. "I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself, rather than have courts...
...Sotomayor's sincere opposition to judicial lawmaking should reassure conservatives who fear that she might be an empathy-driven activist intent on legislating from the bench and imposing her vision of identity politics on an unwilling nation. But is Sotomayor telling the whole story when she says Supreme Court Justices shouldn't - and don't - make policy? It's too bad that neither Sotomayor nor any of the Senators felt at liberty to say what many scholars and court observers believe to be true: Justices often legislate from the bench, and sometimes that's a good thing...
...couldn't Sotomayor acknowledge that Justices often legislate from the bench? She cited as her judicial hero Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who served on the Supreme Court from 1932 to 1938. Sotomayor praised Cardozo for his "great respect for precedent and his great respect ... and deference to the Legislative Branch." But Cardozo wasn't always an advocate of judicial deference. In his most famous book, The Nature of the Judicial Process, Cardozo called a chapter "The Judge as a Legislator." Like legislators, Cardozo wrote, judges must get their experience "from life itself," and when the law isn't clear, a judge...
...some of her speeches, Sotomayor seems to acknowledge that courts sometimes play a policymaking role. But her testimony and judicial opinions suggest that judges should avoid legislating from the bench at all costs. That should mollify those who worry that she will be swayed by empathy rather than the Constitution, but it's a less-than-complete description of how judges actually behave - or perhaps what she herself believes. At this point in our polarized judicial politics, it's too bad that Senators and Supreme Court nominees can't say in public what many of them recognize in private...
Read "Where Sonia Sotomayor Really Stands on Race...