In an earlier post I wrote, regarding a replacement for David Souter, “The next justice will be a woman who received some sort of degree from, or held a position at, Harvard University.” I’ll confess I misjudged Barack Obama. He did not go to the Harvard well yet again. Instead, he’s reportedly selected Sonia Sotomayor, who only managed to receive degrees from Princeton and Yale. My mistake.
It’s funny that for all the talk of “diversity” and “empathy,” the White House stuck to the script and picked yet another sitting federal appeals judge with Ivy League credentials. This no doubt pleases the professional courtiers and sycophants that surround the Supreme Court. Take this post from Tom Goldstein, a nice man who has developed a Supreme Court specialty practice. Regarding Sotomayor, he writes, “her easy confirmation seems assured.”:
I discuss below the four most probable lines of attack that committed ideologues are likely to advance, but to my mind basic political considerations make it very unlikely that mainstream Republican politicians will vocally join the criticism. The view of some that the nomination of Sotomayor will require the President to invest additional political capital seems completely wrong to me. Absent of course some ethical problem, the President simply has the votes.
Even more important, Republicans cannot afford to find themselves in the position of implicitly opposing Judge Sotomayor. To Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark. It really is impossible to overstate its significance. The achievement of a lifetime appointment at the absolute highest levels of the government is a profound event for that community, which in turn is a vital electoral group now and in the future.
Goldstein hastens to add, however, that Sotomayor really is the “best qualified” candidate in spite of her demographic appeal: “The objective evidence is that Sotomayor is in fact extremely intelligent. Graduating at the top of the class at Princeton is a signal accomplishment.” Well, that settles that.
Perhaps most disturbing, though, is Goldstein’s view that loyalty to the state is the most important qualification for a justice: “Almost all of her career has been in public service-as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name.” Now I wonder how true that may be. Her biography suggests she spent at least seven years at a private law firm specializing in “intellectual property” litigation. She had to have made at least some money in that racket.
More to the point, it seems that lack of private sector knowledge and experience is considered a paramount qualification to be a judicial monopolist — right next to attending one of a handful of Ivy League law schools. This isn’t an ideological or partisan problem. I made the same criticism of now-Justice Samuel Alito: “Since the day he left law school, Alito has been on the federal government’s payroll without interruption.”
Not that any of this is surprising. As someone said in response to my Alito post four years ago, “Judges *are* the government.” But as the politicians, press, and political groups gear up for another round of “Supreme Court Confirmation Theatre,” it’s worth remembering that all the talk of “qualifications,” “diversity,” and “empathy” are window dressing. Where it counts, Sonia Sotomayor conforms to the state’s expectations.
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What we don’t want from Obama — another Breyer:
To those of us suffering under the delusion that the Constitution was supposed to “secure the Blessings of Liberty,” Breyer reveals that its purpose was “to create a framework for democratic government — a government that, while protecting basic individual liberties, permits citizens to govern themselves.” But how can it protect “individual liberties” when such protection is precisely what doesn’t allow “citizens to govern themselves”? Or is “basic” actually Breyerspeak for as few as possible?
At this point a certain feeling may be creeping over many, an eerie kind of déjà vu. It grows only stronger when Dionne reclaims the mic. “Breyer’s argument,” he explains, “leads not to judicial activism but to judicial humility. He insists that courts take care to figure out what the people’s representatives intended when they passed laws. You might say that justices should not behave like imperious English professors who insist they can interpret the true meaning of words better than those who actually wrote them.” Now that tore away the disguise, didn’t it? This isn’t the “living document”/”evolving Constitution” rhetoric that the Left’s been blaring all these years. The exalting of majoritarian democracy over individual liberty, the insistence that this view reflects the “intentions” of the Framers of the Constitution — who can mistake it?Who can still not see that behind the meek figure of Stephen Breyer looms — as his alter ego — the monstrous presence of …
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