Yet another right wing meme has sprung up about Sonia Sotomayor. Her alleged high reversal rate in the Supreme Court proves that she is far too radical to be on that court. Nate Silver demolishes math here.
But I suggest that it’s wrong to buy into the basic premise. First, from a purely partisan point of view, there’s not much reason for any Democrat to want a judge with whom the present Supreme Court agrees. One of the reasons it was so important to get a new president was because it was a necessary condition precedent to getting a new court. The Supreme Court is the only court in the country from which there is no appeal, so the fact is that the judges on that court can vote any way they please. Sotomayor, from what I’ve read in the last few days, is a judge who has adhered pretty strictly to precedent. As an lower rung judge it is her obligation to do so. That is not quite the case for a Supreme Court judge. We must all fervently pray that she disagrees with the current majority more than she agrees.
The fact that three of her five cases that the Supreme Court reviewed were reversed is therefore not troubling. What we should be more concerned about is the fact that two of her decisions were upheld.
Okay, the above is a bit facetious. I don’t know anything about the cases in question, nor do I know who constituted the majorities in any of those cases. It may be that she was reversed by the four “liberals” plus Kennedy, which might in fact be troubling. Of course, the folks attacking her on this score have not been interested in doing that analysis either. What I can say in all seriousness is that we should definitely not buy into the argument that a high reversal rate should be considered somehow disqualifying. Given the present extreme right-wing make-it-up-as-you-go-along Supreme Court (see, e.g., Bush v. Gore) a high reversal rate should be expected for any fair minded judge who adheres to settled precedent.
On a somewhat different note, why is it that the media (example here, but I’ve seen others I’m too tired to locate) gives valuable space to Wendy Long, of the Judicial Confirmation Network, a person who can say the following, apparently with a straight face:
Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, said Sotomayor “has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.”
The “current liberal activist Supreme Court” – the Bush v Gore court- the corporations can do no wrong court, is without a doubt the most reactionary court we have had in about a hundred years. No serious person can doubt this. Yet these remarks are printed uncritically. It’s a bit like passing along a quote to the effect that the world is flat without pausing to remark that the statement is unquestionably false.
Post a Comment