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When Jeffrey Rosen started the process of mindlessly repeating anonymous smears against Sonia Sotomayor, one of the chief complaints was that she is "not that smart".
Sotomayor’s admission into Princeton and her performance there both put that argument to rest. As pointed out by PollyPerks in comments at Glenn Greenwald’s blog:
The truth is that Sonia Sotomayor got into Princeton DESPITE deeply unfair admission quotas that discriminated AGAINST her. In 1972 (the year she was apparently admitted), Princeton was in only its third year of accepting women at all. The number of women was strictly limited so that the women admitted had significantly higher qualifications than the men admitted in the same year.
Another commenter, doctorscience, extended the observations:
Sotomayor not only graduated summa cum laude (which is determined by the departments), she received the M. Taylor Pyne Prize for 1976.
The Pyne Prize is the highest award Princeton gives to an undergraduate (it goes to one or two people per year), and is supposed to reflect both scholarship and leadership.
But how has that intelligence played out for Sotomayor on the bench? On May 28, the New York Times published an analysis by law professors from the University of Chicago, Duke University and New York University. Compared to the other candidates who were being considered for the Supreme Court nomination, Sotomayor’s written opinions from 2004-2006 have the highest rate of citation per opinion. She has written fewer opinions than a couple of the other candidates, but there are 8.5 citations by other courts per opinion written by Sotomayor, compared to 5.7 citations per opinion for Diane Wood, the next closest candidate. Here are the results of the analysis:
Citation rate is a widely accepted criterion for the impact of those whose work is published. It’s impossible that an intellectual lightweight could be so influential in her writings.
14 Comments
nice work jim
any way to compare her citation percentage as a whole to other judges even those not considered for supreme court?
Take out ‘any party’ and you are left with…”She’s not intimidated by the eminence or power, or prestige of the media”. This fact annoys Rosen enough to make her a target just because he can?
**************
“She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/st…..e10199a085
Everything I have read about Sotomayor suggests that she is a law and order type of judge. Your NYT link shows the two cases most cited fall into this category. Prisoners not getting off with crimes.
This is what the republicans are most afraid of — someone who will actually judge based on fair application of the constitution. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, Tenent, Bybee, Yoo, Mitchel and Jessen should be scared. This is what this fight is about.
THIS IS WHAT THIS FIGHT IS ABOUT…. Amen.
Someone someplace yesterday said that she is the most conservative of the possible bunch.
And the failure of the white Repub and other critics to understand their screaming biases continues to amaze me.
Bless Sotomayor; may the Lord protect her from the arrows of stupidity and hate.
Here is Sotomayor’s decision in Ricci v. Destefano:
Note that she displays empathy for the plaintiffs, but bases her decision, as an appellate judge should, on whether the trial judge properly applied the law as written by the Congress. Had she been the “empathetic activist” that the wingnuts claim she is, she would have imposed her own values and overturned the decision.
If SCOTUS reverses this decision, it will be substituting its interpretation for the clear direction provided by Congress. If that is not activism, I don’t know what is!
but the very purpose of an appellant court IS to provide activism
on appeal and even in trial, you are asking a judge to rule not only on the law but it’s application
for instance, a jury is usually instructed that they are not to judge the law but the action, it is supposedly up to the judge to judge the law as it applies in that situation
you can’t have it both ways, if there is to be proper application of law, that law must be judged either by the judge or the jury but not neither
biggest purpose on appeal
mind you;
I am of the very few here at the lake that does in fact believe in “jury nullification” and I think it is not only a jury’s right to judge the law as it applies on that specific case but their obligation
and I believe they are obligated regardless of the charge a jurist levels before or after trial
i on the other hand am not a lawyer so nothing I say carries any weight what so ever
Judge Sotomayor was one of three on this panel and the decision was per curiam. It could have been any of the three that wrote the paragraph.
I have spent a lot of time reading the briefs on this case the last couple of days and I have to disagree. I expect the court will vacate and remand with instructions on how to cure some of the problems from the district judges summary judgement. The firefighters did not get due process and the there were factual issues concerning intentional discrimination that should have been put to a jury.
Judge Sotomayor and the other two judges affirmed an unpublished district court decision and drew it into the Second Circuit. This decision is problematic because it allows employers to hide political corruption, cronyism , etc. by claiming they are just complying with Title VII requirements. We will soon see what the SCOTUS has to say and I am sure every Senator on the Judiciary Committee will bring it up.
http://www.scotuswiki.com/inde…..%2C_et_al.
I urge everyone to read it for themselves because there media and pundits are twisting and turning it into something very different.
The US Gummint (Obama Admin. lawyers) also filed a brief everyone should read. They asked the court to vacate and remand and clarify the standards the lower courts should use in these kinds of cases. How many times have you seen or heard that the Obama team sided with the plaintiffs and asked to overturn the decision of Sotomayor (and 6 other Second Circuit judges and the district court judge)?
Since Sotomayor did not write a separate opinion, we can’t tell much about what she was thinking here. I think she missed something but this is one case out of over 300. One case does not make a pattern.
Sotomayer got it wrong — clearly and badly wrong — in Ricci.
The proof of this appears if we ask whether throwing out the test would have passed muster if only blacks (including dyslexic blacks) had scored high enough for promotion.
Don’t kid yourself: The Second Circuit’s opinion in Ricci was race-based.
Welcome, Professor Turley. I was wondering if you would ever tell us your gnome de blog.
Glad to have one of such expertise opining here.
Professor Turley (Jonathan?)
I am no lawyer, but I can read. I read the decision by Judge Arterton in the original case and I think your comments are off the mark. In that decision she notes that…
Once that finding has been made and the Court feels that there are other ways to make the selection that would not show the racially adverse impact, there was no other decision to be made. Your problem lies with the law, which set out these requirements and the EEOC Guidelines that implemented them, and not the judges.
So, you may want Appellate Judges to legislate from the bench, and Judge Sotomayor has noted that it does happen. In this case, she chose not to legislate.
Regarding your question about whether the case would have been heard if there was an adverse impact on white applicants, I would note that Title VII, SEC. 2000e-2. [Section 703](k)1(a(i) requires that the complainant demonstrate that…
It does not require that the race be a minority.
There are serious questions about the motivations of the city officials in not? certifying the results of the exam. They claim is was to protect the city from Title VII disparate impact liability. The facts do not clearly support that claim. The city could have immunized itself from disparate impact liability by doing a post-exam validation study. Such a study had been commissioned and the sent had the report validating the exam. However, the official blocked the delivery of the report to the Civil Service Board. Was their claim of fear of liablity reasonable?? Was there another exam available that would have had less of a disparate impact? They claimed that there was but it has not been produces or developed or identified in the six years since they refused to promote anyone who had passed the test. Another question for the jury. The city officials had already been reprimanded by other courts in many cases for all kinds of shenaigans and corrupt practices in hiring and promotion. There is good reason to believe that is what was going on here. They were using Title VII provisions as a pretext for their actual and illegal discrimination.
newtonusr, I call ‘em as I see ‘em
At some point during the confirmation hearings, we will have the opportunity to hear from some actual, you know, Constitutional experts about, you know, the Constitution.
I am anxious to hear from someone who actually knows wtf they are talking about, instead of me (who doesn’t) and you (who desperately wants to), regarding the law.
What kind of country do we want?
A country based on politically correct decisions?