Sotomayor for the Supreme Court

[netmouse]

btw, regarding the Supreme Court nomination, RH realitycheck writes:

Sotomayor's trail of opinions paints a picture of a fair-minded, incisive legal scholar who is unafraid to stake out unpopular but legally meritorious positions. Right-wingers are going to oppose her nomination with full force - we would be foolish to do it for them.

I quite agree with that last bit. With regard to her history, I still don't know a lot, but the NYT article has a lot of links, here's a bit on the empathy thing, and here's Obama's own video about it.

ETA: comments lead me to read this Salon.com discussion by Greenwald, which is also good and contains links to more material relevant to the topic.

Comments

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

I find myself wondering about the majority of cases the court actually rules on, which don't have to do with abortion, and the potential for her to do positive things and have an amazing impact on the country and peoples' lives there.

While it's certainly true that there are a lot of issues other than abortion, a 6-3 majority to overturn Roe v. Wade would mean that women could be forced, effectively at gunpoint, to carry a child to term against their will. That is so vile, in my book, that your statement is to me morally equivalent to saying "So she might allow the court to bring back slavery, but look how much good she could do on other issues." I think you're saying it because you don't believe abortion rights are actually at risk, but I don't share that level of confidence.

It is possible that the group your quoting knows more about her beliefs on this topic than I do, in which case I'd defer to them too.

Re: abortion, I trust her to follow the rule of law,

Not sure what you mean on this one. The Supreme Court is allowed to overturn its own decisions.

and I'm not actually sure there are going to be more cases on that topic hitting the supreme court in the near future. Do you expect some?

Of course. There always are, and with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito on the court it's a great time for the religious right to try to assert God's ownership of women's wombs. Kennedy can go either way. Which way Sotomayor would go is a vitally inportant question.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

(And apparently I can't type today. Forgive the typos... ;-)