Sotomayor's Confirmation Hearing - I will admit I was impressed!

[GHook93]

High marks for Sotomayor after tough questioning - CNN.com
Firefighter Case, 'Wise Latina' Comment Dominate GOP Grilling of Sotomayor - Political News - FOXNews.com

If anyone read my posts on her you will see I am not a fan. I am still troubled (but not as much) by her judicial activist comment, the Ricci case and La Raza affiliation. However, I liked her style. She seemed very calm and collective. He didn't seemed phased too much very tough round of questioning. I like her explanation on the "wise latina" comment. Honestly I think she was sincere when she said she did a bad play on words of O'Connor old man old women comment. I can see, although I don't agree with, her reasoning in Ricci. I do think she is back pelting on her Duke Law comments of judicial activism. I think she knew what she was saying and it still troubles me, but not as much as before. I do like that she supports Roe v. Wade (sorry fellow conservatives, this is one topic I divert from you on) and the 2nd amendment. I like that she specifically supports Heller!

While I obvious prefer someone well more impartial to race and ethnicity like Thomas, I am less fearful of her then I was 24 hours ago.

 

[Annie]

She certainly remained calm yet one wonders do you look at the 17+ years and what she'd said and written or just take the couple days of practiced q & a's? Even with that:

Sotomayor on Sotomayor: Revises, extends her words - Yahoo! News

and from a left of center law prof:

The Volokh Conspiracy - -

Mike Seidman on Sotomayor: On the Federalist Society Online Debate on the Sotomayor hearings (click here and scroll down), my Georgetown Law colleague Mike Seidman--a cofounder and intellectual leader of the Critical Legal Studies movement in the 1980s--is brutally candid in his opinion of Judge Sotomayor's testimony today:

Speaking only for myself (I guess that's obvious), I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? First year law students understand within a month that many areas of the law are open textured and indeterminate—that the legal material frequently (actually, I would say always) must be supplemented by contestable presuppositions, empirical assumptions, and moral judgments. To claim otherwise—to claim that fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results—is to claim that whenever Justices disagree among themselves, someone is either a fool or acting in bad faith. What does it say about our legal system that in order to get confirmed Judge Sotomayor must tell the lies that she told today? That judges and justices must live these lies throughout their professional carers?

Perhaps Justice Sotomayor should be excused because our official ideology about judging is so degraded that she would sacrifice a position on the Supreme Court if she told the truth. Legal academics who defend what she did today have no such excuse. They should be ashamed of themselves.​

While I do not share Mike's view of law as radically indeterminate, I sure think it is a whole lot more underdeterminate than Judge Sotomayor made it out to be in her testimony today. Mike deserves much credit for speaking his mind about a continued refrain that really grated on me as well. One wonders what other law professors privately think about today's performance.

 

[Lycurgus]

NOT AS MUCH ??? .............. she didn't take ownership of her own words and personal convictions several times! LOL wow

 

[editec]

She's going to make a crackerjack Supreme Court Justice, folks.

A great counterbalance to Thomas.

 

[concept]

She's going to make a crackerjack Supreme Court Justice, folks.

A great counterbalance to Thomas.

Interesting choice of words considering her statements about those old white guys.